‘Say, shall we go and celebrate someplace, Po? Champagne? Just the two of us?’ he smouldered.
‘My feelings for you haven’t changed, even if you nearly did run off with a Count yesterday! We need to pick up what was interrupted on Tuesday, remember?’
‘How could I forget?’ she whispered back.
‘But first, we need to do something really quite horrible.’
****
Twenty-Six
The papers from Sergeant Rainbird lay spilled on her desk between them. However many times they read the contents it didn’t get any better: they had been taken for fools. Used and abused.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Len said, dragging his fingers through his hair. ‘It’s my fault we ever took Babe on. You had misgivings at the start and yet I told you it was all nonsense! This is worse than we ever could have imagined.’
Posie nodded. What he said was true. And worse, he had made her doubt her usually impeccable judgement. Outside in the outer office, Babe was beavering away, making it look as if she were busy typing up Len’s invoices for his lawyer clients.
Posie looked at her watch. It was almost three o’clock. ‘Let’s get this over with. It’s almost time.’
She had used a telephone in an office on the way back to call Scotland Yard. And now Sergeant Rainbird was due here any minute. Posie didn’t really like confrontation: she was a peace-maker at heart, it had been embedded in her by her father. It had even been written over her the night she was born, when the stars spelled out a Libra sky.
But they had no choice.
‘Babe! Can you come through for a minute, please,’ Posie trilled calmly. The girl loomed sulkily in the doorway after a couple of minutes, a wad of typing in her hand, as if to illustrate the point that she was too busy to see them. She took the chair indicated and looked from Posie to Len, who sat together in a row opposite her, behind Posie’s desk.
‘Why do you think you’re here?’ Posie said flatly.
Babe shrugged. ‘Gee, I’m sure I dunno. Am I in trouble? Something to do with that cat, I’m thinking? But I told you everything I knew.’
She pouted and played with a bracelet. Today it was a delicate, sparkling affair set with red stones and shimmering white dew-drops. To be honest, apart from the Valentine’s Day pearls Babe had worn at the Athenaeum Theatre earlier in the week, Posie had never given much thought to the extraordinary way the secretary dressed herself. Now Posie stared very hard.
There was no use beating about the bush.
‘I’ll come straight to the point. For some time now I have questioned your motives in working for us here. A beautiful girl like you, you could have been working for a fashion house, or a big firm who could pay you big bucks. Why work for a tiny Detective Agency stuck in a dusty street in Bloomsbury? Time and time again in the last couple of months I have doubted you, and each time you were gallantly defended by Mr Irving here. We decided to trust you, and you have abused our trust. Today we have found out the extent of that abuse.’
Posie waved the police reports vaguely in Babe’s direction.
Babe looked from one to the other, eyes like a rabbit-in-the-headlights, and made to move from her chair. Posie had no idea if Rainbird was here yet, but she hoped so, otherwise she would have to bluff this one out:
‘There’s no point in running, Babe. Policemen from Scotland Yard are here now. Just like yesterday. Did that scare you, then, too? Having a real-life policeman sitting in our waiting room? Did you think I was on to you already then? That I knew your real identity?’
Panic filled Babe’s face but she remained silent.
‘Is that why you sent the policeman out on an urgent false errand when those other men asked you to do so? To keep the coast clear so they could kidnap me? Did they pay you again? How much was it, another five pounds?’
Babe coloured first red, then a dark beetroot purple.
‘And all the other bad things you’ve done, to deliberately thwart me in my business: not sending telegrams I dictated; losing incoming telegrams; lying about receiving messages. And in all of this you were simply obeying instructions! You were trying to ruin me, to ruin my business.’
Posie’s voice was getting higher and higher, tighter and tighter. Len decided it was a good time to take over. He picked up the papers from Sergeant Rainbird.
‘You are not an American from New York called Babe Sinclair,’ he said quietly. ‘No such person exists. We have the intelligence from the police here. The immigration logs have all been checked. You are Nellie Foster, of Dalston, London. You have been impersonating someone else, and you were good at it too. And now we know why. You were an actress for years, bit-parts mainly, but you were sometimes on the London stage.’
Posie was near to tears. Babe continued to stare stupidly, risen half-up from her chair.
‘And I thought at points that you might be working for Count della Rosa this last week,’ Posie added. ‘But I was wrong. It was worse than that.’
The door to Posie’s office opened and Sergeant Rainbird came in. In the waiting room other uniformed men were hanging around. The Sergeant clipped across the room, handcuffs outstretched.
‘Thank you, Miss Parker,’ he smiled. ‘It’s not every day a mere Sergeant gets to arrest a criminal and gets his hands on some of the world’s most valuable stolen loot at the same time, is it?’
‘We know who you are,’ he smiled grimly at Babe, clicking the handcuffs into place. ‘You are the sister of Bernie Foster, the mastermind behind the theft of the jewels of Countess Faustina Carino in the Burlington Arcade at Christmas.’
He grinned from ear to ear. ‘And while your brother and his pals were put away in jail for a good long time because of Miss Parker’s investigations, we had no idea where the jewels had ended up. Now we know! They were turning up at Grape Street nearly every day, being paraded about; flaunted by the woman whose brother probably told her to look after them and keep them safe!’
‘And he also told you to get his revenge on me, out of sheer spite,’ added Posie. ‘Which you have tried to do, on a daily basis. Oh, just take her away! I can’t bear it!’
Babe didn’t struggle. She hung her black head and moved off with the Sergeant meekly. But at the door she turned and stared at Len and Posie and then gave a horrible throaty cackle.
‘But I very nearly got away wiv’ it, din’ I?’ she said in a broad cockney accent, and gave Len a horrible lecherous wink before heading out of the door.
The quietness in the offices after the last policeman had hob-nailed his way downstairs was strange. Neither of them moved from their chairs.
‘I’ll find someone else. A good secretary this time around,’ Posie said in a soft, quiet voice. ‘I think we’re going to need help with all the extra work which will hopefully come our way now. But I’ll interview her, if you don’t mind.’
‘What about Dolly Price?’ asked Len, sweetly. ‘She’ll be out of a job now the theatre’s closed down, and you two get along together like a house on fire. That might work?’
Posie laughed aloud. ‘You’ve changed your tune!’ she said. ‘You thought she was a bad hat before, and now she’s the best thing since sliced bread?’
‘Maybe I was wrong. It happens,’ Len said contritely.
‘No,’ Posie shook her head. ‘It would be lovely, but something tells me Dolly will have bigger fish to fry than working at the Grape Street Bureau.’
Len laughed too. He stood up and got his hat. ‘Tell me over a drink. Where shall we go? Come on. We deserve it after that ordeal.’
There was a loud rap at the outside office door.
‘I’ll go,’ Len said, as Posie dived for the glamour attack and was already applying her lipstick. Posie heard the familiar friendly tones of a girl from the office downstairs, and then the girl’s retreating steps on the stairs.
‘Just a telegram!’ he said cheerfully, coming back into the office, ripping the paper open.
Posie sprayed herself in parma violet
and mussed her hair. She was almost ready. She would come back later to feed Mr Minks.
Just then she looked up and her heart skipped a beat as she saw Len, stricken-faced, crumple into a chair.
****
Twenty-Seven
For a tiny second she thought she saw Len’s hands tremble, the telegram flicker uncertainly in his hands.
‘All okay?’ she asked, but she didn’t need to wait for his answer to know that it would not be good news. His face had gone white.
‘It’s the old man,’ he said quietly. ‘He’s not in a good way, Po. Not good at all, in fact. Very ill. He says he’s only got a matter of weeks... He wants me to go to him, help him out. I must leave England immediately.’
‘Of course,’ Posie said, shaken at the news. She hadn’t heard Len speak about his father in an age, and hadn’t liked to ask. ‘But where is he exactly?’
Len laughed. ‘Didn’t you know?’ he smiled, a shadow of his usual light-hearted self returning. He nodded at the wall behind her desk:
‘There,’ he smiled. ‘He went to the Cap d’Antibes two years ago. He was so impressed with your painting up there that he left straightaway. He sends me postcards now and then. Apparently it’s even better than he expected: warm, glamorous, an easy-going pace of life. He even has a French lady-friend down there, I believe. Imagine! Poor blighter.’
Posie nodded, ‘I’m so glad he’s had a good time.’
‘I’d better get going, pack a bag and book a train,’ Len said, standing and grabbing his tweed jacket, glancing at his watch.
‘Who knows? I might even be able to get a third-class berth from Calais on the Blue Train if I’m lucky. It’ll take me there direct.’
Posie felt her heart beating very fast against her rib cage. She wanted to stop Len, to jump in his way and keep him here in London just as it had seemed that he might become hers at last. And now all this talk of the glamorous Blue Train, the easy life in the South of France with French lady-friends: what if he didn’t come back?
‘When will you return?’ she said, almost whispering the words, chiding herself for her selfishness as she spoke them aloud.
Len came close to her. He stroked her cheek tenderly.
‘Soon, my love. I promise. I can’t tell you when exactly, but I’ll come back. Will you wait for me?’
Posie nodded. Of course she’d wait. What a question! Even with all the uncertainties still hanging between them, the unanswered questions. The girlfriend, for example… He kissed her hand and reluctantly let it go.
‘I’ll write,’ he called over his shoulder. And then he was gone.
She watched Len’s retreating back as he almost ran out of the Grape Street Bureau, and she felt as if the wind had been blown out of her sails.
She felt a soft rubbing sensation at her ankle, and saw Mr Minks was busily looping himself backwards and forwards, making a fuss of her, purring loudly.
‘You want feeding, don’t you, sir?’ Posie said, bending down and scooping him up, grateful for the distraction. She thought briefly of Count della Rosa, and how the cat had seemed equally comfortable in his arms, oblivious to any danger.
She wondered where he was right now…
And then she banished the thought from her mind, and stepped through into the kitchen.
****
Three Months Later
Epilogue
It had been a late spring that year, and the flowers had taken an age to come through. But now they were more than making up for it, and as Posie strode bare-foot through Bloomsbury Square Gardens with her glacé sandals clutched in her hand, the smell of the roses and freshly cut grass drifted past in a summery May-time bliss.
Lunchtime was nearly over, and workers were reluctantly shouldering their way back to dark, uninviting offices, vying for dusty pavement space with the crowds of tourists who were milling around outside the British Museum, waiting for the guards to open the doors for the afternoon visiting slot.
Posie slung her shoes back on and headed back to the office on Grape Street.
She decided to treat herself to a penny ice at the news-stand, and just as she was choosing the least garish colour on offer, her eyes caught sight of the headline of the lunchtime edition of The Times:
GALACTIC SINKS! ALL SOULS LOST! DOES THE CURSE OF THE MAHARAJAH DIAMOND STRIKE AGAIN?
She gasped and took the slippery ice-cream and a copy of the newspaper at the same time, gobsmacked. She stood rooted to the spot, reading the details.
It was incredible: the boat had sunk only five hundred nautical miles off the coast of Bombay. There was no obvious reason for the disaster, although the ship was running behind schedule and it was thought she was trying to make up for lost time by taking a perilous short cut.
All three hundred souls aboard had drowned. A rescue mission was not being attempted, and no foul play was suspected. The Maharajah diamond, in Captain Grace’s possession, was now buried somewhere at the bottom of the Arabian Sea.
The rest of the story was given over to lurid details about the history of the curse of the Maharajah diamond and its string of tragedies, including a brief mention about Lucky Lucy and Count della Rosa, who had, as yet, evaded capture by the police and was top of police wanted-lists across all of Europe.
Posie folded the paper carefully, and licked the raspberry ice thoughtfully. So this is how it ends, she thought to herself.
She sighed: poor Captain Grace and his crew, and all those poor passengers. But somehow she was pleased that the wretched diamond, which she had held for a blistering few minutes, was now out of human reach and couldn’t cause any more heartache.
She got into her office on the strike of two o’clock. A client was coming in half an hour and she wanted to prepare in good time.
The new secretary, Prudence Smythe, was busily folding invoices and licking stamps in her little office. She was a conscientious girl, and a very good secretary. She had a nice prim telephone manner too, and that was important. The telephone, which Posie had installed with the money which Len had been paid for his last job, rang all day long.
Inspector Lovelace had been right: the crazy week in February and the article in the Associated Press had done wonders for business at the Grape Street Bureau. Posie was more in demand than she could ever have wished for, and it felt good to know that she could keep the place running virtually single-handed, not comfortably perhaps, but adequately. Gone were the days of worrying about selling her last few nice bits and pieces to pay for rent and firewood, and gone too was the guilt she felt about relying on Len’s shadowing work.
Just as well she was in demand: Len had been gone now for three long months, and with no definite fixed date for his return, Posie’s earnings had had to keep the whole place afloat.
He wrote infrequently, but his letters when they came were filled with a longing for London, for Grape Street and for Posie. It seemed Mr Irving Senior’s health had miraculously turned a corner, and French doctors were hopeful for a full recovery. At the bottom of every letter Len had written:
Yours, my love. Soon. X X
Posie wrote every week to the boarding-house address Len had given her and fed him tit-bits of news.
She took her scissors now and started to cut out the article about the sinking of The Galactic. She would send it to him with a short note. She missed Len terribly, but she didn’t want to press him in the letters, to ask when exactly ‘soon’ might be.
Just then Prudence knocked and came through. There was a telephone call for Posie and the caller wouldn’t speak to just a secretary. He had demanded Miss Parker in person.
Posie took the earpiece. The booming tones of the Tenth Earl of Cardigeon met her ears. He sounded in a surprisingly good mood:
‘Parker?’
‘The very same, sir.’
‘You seen the news about The Galactic?’
‘I have, sir. A tragedy. I am afraid the Arabian Sea is a bit far for me to get to, sir, if you were going to ask me to find
the diamond for you a second time. Besides, I can’t swim.’
The Earl laughed a great belly-laugh.
‘Not why I’m ringing, Parker. I’ve been in touch with the insurers. They’re going to pay out and the Maharajah has decided he will split the proceeds in half with me. Jolly nice fellow, what?’
Posie gulped, surprised. ‘Yes, I’d say so, sir. You can get the roof fixed now at Rebburn, can’t you?’
Again came the belly-laugh.
‘Perhaps. But I wanted to thank you properly for helping us out back in February. It all looked a bit of a lost cause at one point. I’ve decided to give you some of the insurance monies by way of thank you. I know you’re in a bit of a tight spot since all your family died. I’m going to send you a cheque for ten thousand pounds. That should see you right, what?’
Posie couldn’t remember the conversation ending, but she had floated through the waiting room in a blur. Ten thousand pounds! A small fortune! Certainly enough to buy her own flat, and pay the rent upfront on the Grape Street Bureau for several years to come… Was she dreaming?
Prudence bobbed in. ‘Your client is here, Miss. The one about the missing husband? And these arrived for you by the afternoon post.’
Prudence laid a thick cream envelope embossed in silver on Posie’s desk. It could only be one thing. A wedding invitation!
Posie tore it open and sure enough, enclosed within was a silver-lettered card inviting her and a partner to the September wedding of Lord Rufus Cardigeon and Miss Dorothea (‘Dolly’) Price. The wedding would be at St Bride’s Church in London.
‘Oh! How lovely!’ Posie smiled to herself, imagining the day ahead, the chance for a new dress for the first time in years, and at her side…she hoped against hope that he would be back in time…
Dare she mention her recent good news and the wedding invite in the letter she would write to Len today?
‘And these came, for you too,’ Prudence mumbled shyly, passing across a bunch of bright yellow mimosa. The dry dusky scent took over the room, filling it with sweetness.
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