Love for the Baron

by John Creasey

  “Bill,” said Superintendent Hardy to Bristow on the telephone, “two more men were waiting outside Mannering’s place to attack him when he got home.”

  Bristow, who had just got home, demanded: “Was he hurt?”

  “Not seriously.”

  “Get the men?”

  “Not when I last heard,” answered Hardy. “Have you any idea what all this attempted violence is about?”

  “I don’t know a thing more than either Mannering or I told you,” Bristow assured him. “But my God, I’m going to find out! Four attackers in one night! Are you having the Chelsea house watched?”

  “I’m not, but the Division over there is, and the Yard’s taken over,” Hardy told him. “My only concern now is Lucille Peek, and I’ll have her watched and followed wherever she goes. If you get the slightest inkling of what it’s all about you’ll let me or someone at the Yard know, won’t you?”

  “Yes,” Bristow said. “I certainly will.”

  He replaced the receiver and stood for a few moments in the hallway of his flat on Putney Hill, where he and his wife had lived for over twenty years. The call had come through only a few minutes after he had got in. His wife was reading in bed, and when he joined her she simply glanced up and smiled vaguely before going back to the pages.

  He faced what seemed to be a simple fact: the moment Mannering had discovered the identity of the woman in dark glasses, these vicious attacks had begun. There was another, equally unarguable fact: they had started within a few hours of his giving Norman Harcourt and the woman the final valuation figures for the Peek Collection.

  All his years of training and experience of Scotland Yard seemed to scream at Bristow with one question: why?

  He found himself asking what he knew Hardy and everyone on the Metropolitan Police Force was asking: Did John Mannering know more than he had yet admitted? Getting ready for bed Bristow ran through everything he could remember, and everything brought the same answer: in this, Mannering had levelled with him completely; he was as baffled as Bristow.

  What other ‘coincidences’ had there been? Repeat: the violence had started after Mannering had identified Lucille; it had started after Mannering had taken the valuation. Was there anything else—God! The sudden seizure of Norman Harcourt only an hour after he had realised the enormous value of the Collection and at the very moment when he had been about to tell Mannering!

  Could he have been silenced?

  The withdrawal of certain drugs could cause a seizure; or the administration of other drugs. Way back in his mind there was a recollection of a drug which could induce—

  An overdose of digitalis would bring on an attack in some patients.

  Bristow turned and looked at his bedside clock as his wife shut her book, and with a placid “Goodnight, dear”, settled down. It was five minutes to one. Much too late to start making inquiries, but first thing in the morning he would start checking. First, how Norman Harcourt was: second, what drug could have brought on that attack at the crucial moment.

  Bristow turned over, willing himself to sleep; but he was awake for a long time.

  Norman Harcourt was not sleeping, either.

  He lay between life and death, with nurses round his bed and a doctor in constant attendance. He was a widower, no relatives were by his side, but one of his younger partners was, as anxious as if he were a son.

  Lucille Peek slept, unaware of police watching both the back and front of her house. She looked quite lovely. On the bedside table was a newspaper-cutting with a photograph of Mannering, and, close to it, several smaller photographs cut out of the glossy magazines which served the arts and the antique businesses; it was surprising how many articles she had been able to find about him.

  There was also a photograph of his wife, a beautiful woman as different from Lucille as two women could be.

  On the dressing-table stood a wig which she used occasionally for evenings, so skilfully made that it always appeared to be her own hair, dressed in a different style. It faced her. There was a faint light from the passage which she left on all night and this showed not only the wig on the head-stand, but also its reflection in the dressing-table mirror.

  On the wig, was the emerald tiara.

  Even in this faint light the green jewels glowed, a lambent light which was like the light reflected from the eyes of a hundred cats; green, glowing eyes which were still for one minute and then seemed to move but did not really move at all. When she woke in the morning this would be the first thing she would see; and, on the same instant, she would see a portrait of John Mannering, taken from a magazine which, only two years before, had published an article on Quinn’s; which inevitably meant an article, also, on Mannering.

  Mannering woke to the sound of a closing door, lay for a few moments not sure where he was but aware that the room was unfamiliar. Outside, a murky daylight showed against the windows; it was November, and to be daylight it must be getting late. Nine? He turned to look at his bedside clock; it was half-past ten. What on earth had he been doing to sleep at this hour?

  Suddenly he thought: Am I at Lucille’s?

  The thought was hardly in his mind when he realised he was in the spare room of his own flat, and memory flooded back. He felt tenderness at his temple and the back of his left hand: nothing worse.

  Lorna must have come in, seen him, seen the patches, left him to rest. He pushed the bedclothes back and got out of bed cautiously, relieved to find he was all in one piece. His head ached a little but nothing like it had done the night before. He called: “Anyone at home?”

  Immediately there were footsteps and Lorna appeared at the end of the passage, wearing a smock which meant she had been painting in the studio.

  “John,” she said severely, “back to bed while I make some tea.”

  He drew her to him and kissed her cheek, a chaste good-morning kiss like a thousand others. He saw the anxiety in her eyes but let her go and hurry back into the kitchen while he plunged his face in cold water in the bathroom which led off the spare room. He tapped both bandages gingerly, and the cuts were no more than tender, and if there were any inflammation they would be sore. Bless that policeman! He was actually back in bed, hitching the pillows up behind him, when Lorna came in with the same tea-tray the police had used not so many hours before. She put this on a nearby table, and sat at the foot of the bed.

  “You look all right,” she admitted.

  “No bloodshot eyes? No signs of dissolution? No—”

  “Darling,” she said, “it isn’t funny.”

  “How much do you know?”

  “Everything that matters I should think,” she said. “You were attacked when you went to Mrs. Peek’s flat last night, and again when you came here.” As she said: “Mrs. Peek’s flat,” she began to pour out his tea, as if she did not want to see his expression: or else did not want him to see hers.

  She knew where he had been for dinner. She—

  He hadn’t had any opportunity to tell her, anyhow. His heart stopped hammering, and he realised that the decision to tell, or not to tell, her had been made for him – by Bristow.

  She handed him a cup of steaming hot tea. He sipped in silence for a few seconds, and then asked: “Did Bill tell you how much her Collection is worth?”

  “Nearly three and a half million pounds,” she answered. “I could understand—” She broke off and laughed. “What on earth am I doing, trying to think for you when you’re only half-awake!”

  “Your thoughts are often clearer than mine,” he said. “Think on. Aloud!”

  She leaned forward, rearranging the cups on the tray. Was it his imagination or was there something different in her manner? A preoccupation with thoughts she had no intention of ‘thinking aloud’?

  “I could understand it if they’d tried to prevent you from valuing the Collection if they – someone – wanted it to be undervalued, but why now, darling? What motive could anyone possibly have? Unless—”

  Again she b
roke off and this time there was no doubt at all in his mind that she was holding something back. He wondered whether he should try to make her talk or whether he should just leave whatever it was alone. Quite suddenly he knew that he wanted to know, that it was not good to hold secrets so that the other might wonder and even worry or fret.

  So he said quietly: “Unless what, darling?”

  “Unless someone is jealous of you,” she said. “Unless someone thinks you can influence her and influence what she does with the Collection. Is that possible?”

  12

  Jealousy?

  Mannering stopped hearing what his wife said after the first sentence. “Unless someone is jealous of you.” Who could have put that thought in Lorna’s mind? Jealous? He knew that he looked as startled, and as shocked, as he felt. Lorna shot him a look, limpid, and much too innocent.

  “Could you influence her, darling?”

  Mannering drew a deep breath.

  “It hadn’t occurred to me,” he said. “Why on earth should you think—?” He broke off, not wanting to complete the sentence with the obvious “… anyone would be jealous of me?” He finished his tea, which was still hot: that showed how little time had passed since they had started talking.

  “Another?” Lorna asked.

  “I think I need a strong whisky and soda!”

  “I’ll cook you some bacon and eggs and make some coffee,” she said; there was no question, she was laughing at him; well, half-laughing. “Darling,” she went on, “I think Mrs. Peek – Lucille – in the way rich and capricious women can be, is infatuated with you. Isn’t she?”

  “Could be,” Mannering said uncomfortably.

  “Ah, my feminine intuition wins again,” Lorna said with a note of triumph. “After all, it didn’t need much of it. She has followed you about quite a lot, you know. I haven’t been on the lookout for her but even I’ve seen her at least a dozen times.”

  “Dark glasses and all.”

  “What’s she like without them?”

  “A lot of people would say she was beautiful.”

  “What do you say?”

  “She’s beautiful all right,” Mannering said stiffly. “Lorna—”

  Lorna said: “She is your client, isn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “And not only because she’s infatuated with you?”

  “In spite of that,” answered Mannering.

  “So you’ll have to do whatever you can to help her,” Lorna said, “and if she were an old woman of eighty or a teenager, or a man or a boy you wouldn’t feel you had to go into explanations about your relationship with them, would you?”

  “No,” Mannering admitted.

  “You’d ask me to help if I could, but unless you thought I could you probably wouldn’t talk much about the case, would you?”

  “No.”

  “Very well, then”—Lorna took his cup and kissed him lightly on the forehead—“just promise me one thing.” She paused and he knew she was deliberately tantalising him, yet he could not imagine what she was going to ask, and he thought, in a flash mental vision, of what Lucille had said about some promises which could not be kept, some requests—demands?—which were beyond the human being to command. He waited, heart thumping, as the laughter faded from Lorna’s eyes, and she went on: “Promise to let me know if I can help. About the Collection, about the case, about Lucille – anything.”

  With an enormous sense of release Mannering replied: “Yes, my darling, I will.”

  “And don’t get yourself killed,” added Lorna.

  That was the first time emotion broke through, reflected in the slight huskiness of her voice, and the sudden dread which showed in her eyes. Then she stood up, lifted the tray, and turned towards the door.

  “Breakfast in half-an-hour. Does that sound good?”

  It sounded good all right. It was good.

  He blessed the tact with which Lorna, leaving the coffee to percolate, went up to the studio; he would call up to her before he left. He ate with relish, marvelling at his wife, wondering how she really felt, what she guessed, whether she thought that he and Lucille were lovers. It was nearly half-past eleven when he finished, and he was in the hall when the telephone bell rang again. He picked up an extension.

  “Mannering.”

  Bristow said: “Norman Harcourt’s dying. He’s asking for you. How soon can you be ready?”

  “I am ready. Where does he live?”

  “In Wimbledon – Number 15, Common Way,” answered Bristow. “I’ll arrange for a police car to lead you if you’ll be at the top of Putney Hill in fifteen minutes.”

  “I’ll be there,” Mannering said, moving towards the lift entrance the moment the receiver was down. “Darling, I’m off.” He heard her footsteps and she appeared at the hatch, kneeling down to look at him.

  “Old Harcourt’s in a bad way,” he said, “and asking for me.”

  “Call me whenever you can. I’ll be in all day.”

  “I will.”

  He blew her a kiss and then hurried out of the flat, recognising plainclothes men on duty as he reached his car, remembering the times when they would have been waiting there not to watch over his safety but to trap him as a suspected criminal. An age away. Turning into King’s Road he saw a police car heading towards him from Chelsea High Street, and it followed close behind. The authorities were evidently taking the previous attacks on him seriously. He had a good run at traffic lights except at the top of Putney High Street, where a funeral cortege delayed him. At the top of the hill, another police car stood waiting, and pulled out as Mannering approached.

  Soon they turned off the main road, and the police car ahead made several sharp swings before entering a wide street with a sign reading clearly: Common Way. This was part of the Victorian era, only one small block of modern flats having so far encroached on the big, red brick houses which had once been the norm. Most of the entrances were wide and well-kept, most had big gates; trees here were tall and stately, the shrubs thick with rhododendron, bay and laurel.

  The police driver waved, and slowed down as he pointed to an open gateway; on the gate-post the number FIFTEEN was clearly marked. Mannering turned into this. Three other cars were in a spacious driveway which encircled a patch of shrubs. The house was taller than most and had a round turret room with a spire. As Mannering approached the wide porch, the door opened and a youthful-looking man asked: “Mr. Mannering?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am Charles Pace, one of Mr. Harcourt’s partners.” He turned and led the way towards a passage at the side of the stairs, talking as he went. “It is very good of you to come, although whether Mr. Harcourt will recognise you or become coherent I would not like to say.” He stopped at a fairly recently installed lift, adding: “This saved him from walking up the stairs, which latterly became such a problem for him.” He stood aside for Mannering to enter, followed, and pressed a button marked 2; there were four buttons in all. The lift went up very slowly. Mannering began to wonder if they would ever get there.

  At last it stopped – opposite the door of what proved to be a large bedroom at the front of the house, with huge bay windows at which the curtains were half-drawn. Huge pieces of mahogany furniture stood against the walls, one of which was a four-poster bed on which Norman Harcourt lay, breathing heavily.

  On one side was an elderly man; on the other, a much younger one.

  “Dr. Medway and Dr. Gill,” said Pace in a quiet but perfectly audible voice. “Mr. Mannering, gentlemen.”

  The others nodded. Harcourt gave no sign at all that he had heard the name or indeed heard anything. A young Jamaican nurse came out of a bathroom which led off the room, but did not approach. Mannering felt as if he were in the presence of death and was appalled by the change in the sick man’s appearance. Yesterday he had been fresh-faced, wholesome-looking, a dignified seventy. Now his face was grey and drawn, his eyes sunken.

  “Norman,” said the older doctor, Medway, in a
clear voice, “Mr. Mannering has come to see you.”

  How could that corpse-like figure possibly hear? Certainly Harcourt did not stir, but Medway was not put off and, leaning a little closer, he repeated: “Norman, Mr. Mannering has come to see you.”

  Harcourt did react.

  His eyes flickered open. He turned his face towards the sound of the voice, and his lips moved.

  “Mannering. Must—talk—Mannering,” he muttered.

  Medway touched Mannering’s arm and he leaned closer to the sick man’s face, speaking in a clear, normal voice.

  “I am here, Mr. Harcourt. This is Mannering. How can I help you?”

  The ashen lips moved again.

  “Must speak—Mannering.”

  “I am Mannering,” Mannering said. He took the old man’s hand in his own and went on: “We met in your office, yesterday.”

  “Mannering,” Harcourt said, sighing. He lay still for a moment and then suddenly the heavy lids of his eyes opened, his hand clutched Mannering’s and he actually started up. “Mannering!”

  “Yes, I’m here,” Mannering said, very clearly. “What can I do?”

  “Save her,” Harcourt said thickly. “Save Lucille. They will kill her. Or they will ruin her. They say she is mad – but she is not. They say she murdered her husband – but she did not. They hate her. Save—”

  He broke off.

  For a moment the hand clutching Mannering’s kept its grip, then slowly it loosened. The nurse appeared as if from nowhere, gently easing his head back to the pillow.

  Harcourt’s eyes closed.

  “I should think he has said all he wanted to say, Mr. Mannering,” said Dr. Medway quietly, “and I hope very much that you will be able to do what he asks. I believe he kept himself alive simply to beg this of you.”

  It was Medway who now held the stage, a man with both strength and gentleness in his expression.

  “I’ll do what he wants if I get all the help I need,” Mannering said, and before Medway could ask what he meant he went on: “Do you know the Peek family?”