She wandered back towards the kitchen, passing Jim, the waiter she had sat next to at supper on her way.
‘Have you brought your nightie?’ he whispered as he passed.
She grabbed his arm, nearly causing him to drop the dish of trifle he was carrying. ‘What?’ she said. ‘I’m not thinking of staying the night.’
‘Lots do, I hear, if the price is right.’ And the waiter went on his way whistling to himself.
Slightly bemused by that remark Kate took refuge in the main reception room and sat down near the door, idly watching the band finish setting up at the other end of the room, with much crashing and banging and whining of feedback. A couple of men came in looking harassed and began stripping the cushion covers off a couple of long sofas against the wall, revealing brown stains that could have been anything from coffee to wine, gravy to blood. They fitted clean new ones, put them back and plumped them up before retreating with the old ones into the back regions of the house again. It was all a bit hit and miss, Kate thought, like an elderly woman with poor eyesight trying to make up her face like a teenager. If the guests were as important – distinguished even – as Tatiana had said they were, Kate could not see how they would be taken in by Broughton Hall for a moment. She could not see the attraction. Maybe, as Andrei had suggested, there was more going on here than was immediately apparent.
She jumped when the front doorbell eventually rang and the butler tottered slowly across the hall to open it, admitting two men in evening dress who handed over their coats and hats brusquely and made their way past Kate, unobtrusive in her corner armchair, to the bar. She got up and checked the film in her camera for the tenth time. She did not want the Broughton-Clarkes to see her lounging about when it looked as if work was about to begin. She knew Roddy resented the fee she had asked for the evening and she wondered if maybe Andrei had done the same chore for nothing to please Tatiana for some reason. If Andrei had holed up here at Broughton Hall in one of the innumerable bedrooms upstairs, he could have kept out of sight for weeks, she thought. The row with Roddy must have been serious to make that impossible.
The doorbell pealed again and this time Kate thought she recognized the voice of the next visitor, but even when she positioned herself near the door she could not be sure, although she did hear the butler explaining quite clearly that he should take the young lady – or possibly ladies – to the kitchen door where they would be shown where to change. Perhaps there was to be some sort of entertainment later, Kate thought, wondering at yet another expense Roddy had incurred.
Within half an hour the house was buzzing, the band was playing endless quicksteps and foxtrots, which were mostly ignored, the bar was doing a brisk trade and people were beginning to filter into the dining room to attack the buffet supper. Kate began by taking some general shots of the dining room but as people settled into groups at tables she wandered round the reception room offering to take pictures of couples or groups of friends and explaining that the pictures would come back to Roddy Broughton-Clarke within days and he would make them available after that.
By nine o’clock, Kate had used up a roll of film and went into the hall looking for somewhere away from the crowds to switch to a new roll. She had just about finished when the doorbell peeled again and the butler admitted a new arrival who took her completely by surprise. Ray Robertson and another expensively dressed man she did not recognize handed their coats over and looked around them curiously as if neither of them had been to Broughton Hall before. Robertson spotted Kate almost immediately and strode over to her with a look of surprise.
‘What are you doing here, young lady?’ he asked. She explained the job she had been hired to do and he smiled knowingly.
‘Well, good for you,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’ll do a good job for his nibs. I thought for a minute you might have that boyfriend of yours with you. Does Roddy know you go out with a copper?’
‘Why should he?’ Kate said, bemused by the question.
‘Well, I’d keep stum about it if I was you,’ Robertson said. ‘Fred and me, we’re here to talk a spot of business with his lordship and it’s not anything Flash Harry should know about.’ He tapped the side of his nose meaningfully, took Fred Bettany’s arm and moved away towards the bar. Within a minute he was joined there by Roddy Broughton-Clarke himself, and to Kate’s even greater surprise, the clarinettist Chris Swift from the Jazz Cellar. Kate turned away quickly, as she realized that it was his voice she had half recognized as he arrived at the front door and been redirected round to the back of the house. She still wondered why.
As the evening wore on she noticed that a steady stream of men were having a word with Broughton-Clarke and then making their way upstairs. Her curiosity piqued, she waited for a quiet moment and then went quickly up the stairs herself and found herself at the end of the long corridor where she knew there were bedrooms. She hesitated to open any of the doors, guessing from the procession of men who had been coming up that some of them would be occupied, but as she stood hesitantly close to the stairs she heard a muffled scream somewhere at the end of the corridor, which stopped abruptly as if someone had put a hand over a mouth to muffle the noise and she knew she had to act.
She walked slowly down the corridor, her heart pounding, listening at every door until she came to one where she could hear the sound of an angry voice and the muffled sobbing of a girl. Without thinking, she banged on the door, which provoked an instant loud curse inside and then complete silence.
‘Is everything all right in there?’ she asked quietly. The silence continued until suddenly the door opened and an angry red-faced, half-dressed man peered out.
‘What the hell do you want?’ he asked.
‘I thought I heard someone call for help,’ Kate said.
‘So what?’ the man demanded. ‘We’re having a bit of fun. That’s what I’ve paid for. So sod off, will you, you nosy little tart.’ He made to slam the door and then hesitated, looking at Kate sharply. ‘You’re the photographer aren’t you? Well keep your camera well away from me.’ At this, he slammed the door hard and Kate hurried away to the stairs, trying to blend in with the party again. But she watched for the man to come down again and when he did she unobtrusively made sure that he appeared in the background of as many of her shots as she could manage. But it was pretty soon obvious that the man was not going to let the matter lie when she saw him deep in angry conversation with Roddy Broughton-Clarke who immediately glanced in Kate’s direction, but he did not move towards where she was taking a shot of a group of fairly merry revellers making the most of a bottle of champagne. But she could tell from his expression that he knew she was a threat, and she felt suddenly cold. Maybe, she thought, it was time to go.
A few minutes later Broughton-Clarke seemed about to head in her direction when he was waylaid by the elderly butler who whispered something in his ear. The look of shock on Broughton-Clarke’s face was evident even from where Kate was standing on the other side of the room. He stood stock still for a long time, looking suddenly haggard and ill, before eventually coming to a decision and she watched as he approached the band and waved them into a ragged silence. As the music stopped the conversation also drifted to a halt as people became aware that their host was standing on the band’s platform wanting to speak.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, his voice slightly hoarse. ‘I regret to inform you that I have just been told that the president of the United States, John Kennedy, has been shot and has died in hospital.’
Kate gasped, as did everyone else in the room, and then for a moment there was total silence. Roddy, she thought, looked bewildered but struggled on.
‘I hope this will not spoil your evening,’ he ventured although one or two groups were already getting to their feet. The collective shock was palpable, the party atmosphere dissipated in seconds. ‘There is a television in the dining room if you wish to follow developments . . .’ Roddy faltered. More of the company got to their feet and made a beelin
e for the dining room and Roddy began to look desperate. Behind him the band looked as if they were about to pack up for the night. ‘Please do continue to enjoy your evening if you can,’ Roddy went on before petering out.
Tatiana appeared suddenly and stood by his side looking distraught as the trickle of people moving out became a rush. Kate felt tears pricking her eyes and a sense of outrage as she followed the crowd into the dining room where a black-and-white television was showing flickering film of the events in Dallas that had ended in tragedy a couple of hours earlier. Her mother, she thought, an Irishwoman with immense pride in Kennedy, would be in pieces. Roddy Broughton-Clarke’s party, she knew, was effectively over.
After a few minutes she turned away, too upset to watch any more, only to find her path was blocked by Broughton-Clarke himself, with Chris Swift close behind.
‘I want a word with you, young lady,’ Broughton-Clarke hissed and took hold of her arm. Between them the two men marched her towards the back of the house and into a small stone flagged alcove close to the kitchen. They were far too strong to resist, and as she looked around she realized no one else had noticed her plight.
‘What the hell were you doing upstairs?’ Broughton-Clarke asked. ‘No one asked you to go up there, least of all knocking on doors and making a nuisance of yourself.’
‘I was looking for the toilet,’ Kate said. ‘Then I heard someone cry out. What’s going on up there, for goodness’ sake?’ She knew the answer to that but her only defence was to appear naive.
‘That’s nothing to do with you,’ Broughton-Clarke said. It was obvious he did not believe her, and she felt icy cold.
‘And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep quiet about it,’ Chris Swift said quietly. ‘We don’t want any more nasty accidents, do we?’
Kate swallowed hard as various random pieces of information came together in her head and Broughton-Clarke pricked her neck lightly with the point of his knife she had not noticed he was holding. It was not a big knife, she told herself, but it was obviously razor sharp and quite long enough to cut a throat with. She fought a rising panic. She knew how very easy it was to cut a throat.
‘What people do upstairs is their business,’ Broughton-Clarke said, pressing slightly harder so that Kate felt a trickle of blood run down her neck. ‘Nothing to worry about, you nosy little cow.’
‘Nothing to talk about,’ Swift added. ‘Not so much as a single word, if you know what’s good for you.’
What would have happened next she never knew because they all heard someone approaching heavily down the narrow corridor behind them.
‘There you are, Roddy,’ Ray Robertson said heartily. ‘I was looking for you, mate. There’s obviously a lull in proceedings. Can we have a private word?’
Kate slipped out of Broughton-Clarke’s reach with breathless relief as the two men froze. For a moment she almost panicked again as Robertson grabbed her arm but he pulled her firmly out of the alcove and shoved her back towards the subdued crowds in the hall, some of them already milling about and demanding their coats from the harassed butler.
‘Time for Miss O’Donnell to go home, I think,’ he said to the other two men. ‘No harm done, is there Katie? Just a little misunderstanding.’
Kate wasted no time in taking Ray Robertson’s advice. She retrieved her coat and, heart thumping uncomfortably, followed a couple in evening dress out of the main doors. They headed for their car while she began the long walk down the drive towards the road hoping that when she got there she could beg a lift back into Amersham. But when she arrived at the gates she found to her astonishment that several of the departing cars had been stopped by police who had blocked the exit with their own vehicles, blue lights flashing. She stood uncertainly by for a moment wondering if she would be allowed to make her way out when she saw a familiar figure getting out of a familiar red Ford Capri parked behind the official vehicles and coming towards her.
‘I was about to come and look for you,’ DS Harry Barnard said putting an arm round her. ‘Come and sit in my car. This is all about to get very interesting.’ It was only when he got her into the car that he noticed the trickle of blood running down her neck.
‘Who the hell did that to you?’ he asked.
‘Roddy had a knife,’ she said. She felt suddenly sick as she realized how close she had come to a man who would have had no hesitation in using his weapon had Ray Robertson not intervened. ‘I went upstairs and saw – or heard – too much,’ she whispered. ‘Roddy and Chris Swift grabbed me. Your friend Ray found me just in time.’
‘I’ll bloody have those two bastards,’ Barnard said. ‘I followed Swift here. He was delivering girls, bold as brass. Those two won’t see the light of day for a very, very long time.’
It was almost a week before Kate and Harry Barnard met again away from the police station where she had made her statement, handed over the photographs she had taken at Broughton Hall and accepted that she would be an important witness when Roddy Broughton-Clarke and Chris Swift eventually came to trial on a charge of murdering Jenny Maitland and Ricky Smart. They met again at the Greek restaurant where he had introduced Kate to the delights of kebabs and ouzo.
‘You won’t be alone giving evidence,’ Barnard said when they were settled at a table and had ordered mezze. ‘When we rounded up all the girls who were at the hall that night, including the ones Swift had delivered personally, they fell over themselves to make complaints against Swift and Broughton-Clarke, and Ricky Smart. Ricky was the one who procured the girls but Swift was the one who found the clients and made sure the girls provided exactly what was required. If they objected to any of their clients’ demands all the men would make sure they did as they were told, mainly by threatening them, telling them they would scar them for life.’
‘I can believe it,’ she said quietly, recalling only too vividly the moments she had spent with a knife at her throat. ‘So who killed Ricky? And why?’
‘Believe it or not, Ricky seems to have drawn the line at murder, and kicked up a bit of a fuss. Jenny Maitland’s death caused the three to fall out completely. We think Jenny was beaten at the Hall by one of the clients at the last party. She might even have been killed there. Roddy Broughton-Clarke wanted the body off the premises as fast as possible so he drove her into London and dumped her, probably stabbing her just to make sure she was dead. She knew far too much to be left alive.’
‘It was a very sharp knife,’ Kate said feelingly.
‘Chris Swift is very keen to deny he had anything to do with either killing. He’s blaming Roddy, though I doubt he’ll get away with that in court. They’ve both been charged with the murders.’
‘So that’s why Andrei was so scared he would be next. He found out what was going on at the Hall and began making sense of it all.’
‘Andrei Lubin knew enough to be very frightened,’ Barnard said. ‘That’s why he closed up the studio and made himself scarce. He turned himself in the morning after he read in the papers what had happened at Broughton Hall overnight. He told us that Ricky had told him he was meeting Roddy to talk business. He’ll be another witness at the trial.’
‘Ricky probably wanted Andrei to know that he was doing well for himself, while Andrei’s projects were running into trouble. He was always full of himself,’ Kate said.
‘He can’t have realized how dangerous Broughton-Clarke and Chris Swift were,’ Barnard agreed.
‘And Tatiana? What’s going to happen to her?’
‘She’s been charged with living off immoral earnings and running a brothel,’ Barnard said. ‘It doesn’t look as if they’ll ever manage to mend the roof at Broughton Hall.’
‘Poor Tatiana, she’ll be mortified,’ Kate said. ‘She’ll never be a top designer either,’ Kate said. ‘And what happens to the men who were so happy to pay them for the girls they used – or abused.’
‘Tricky,’ Barnard said. ‘The girls didn’t know the men’s names, of course.’
‘
There were some well-known faces there,’ Kate said. ‘The girls could identify them from my photographs. Or do they get away with it? Wasn’t there a guest list?’
Barnard glanced away for a moment. ‘They were not even arrested,’ he said. ‘The raid was organized by the local police. They made their own decisions, for their own reasons.’
‘Right,’ Kate said, looking bleak. ‘Although one of them may have beaten Jenny Maitland, possibly killed her.’
‘They said they didn’t have evidence to hold them. Using a prostitute isn’t a crime.’
‘And Muddy Abraham?’ Kate asked.
‘He’ll be a witness too, but after that he’ll go back to the States. The extradition request has already been approved.’
‘There’s not much justice there, is there?’ Kate said, her eyes full of tears.
Barnard shrugged and put a tentative hand over hers. ‘You have to learn to live with it,’ he said.
Dressed to Kill Page 22