The Lost Empress

by Steve Robinson

  ‘They let you take it out?’

  ‘Yes, they did,’ Tayte said, studying it again as he turned it slowly in his hand. It was a tan, softback notebook that had no remarkable features other than its condition. It was a hundred years old, but it looked like new thanks to the way it had been stored all this time.

  ‘The writing inside the notebook isn’t Saxby’s,’ Tayte said, thinking back to the reading room where he and Bishop first made the discovery. ‘Given what it contains, I don’t doubt that it was originally penned by Saxby, but this version was most definitely written by someone else.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘Do you remember that one of the incriminating pieces of evidence against Saxby was an address written to someone in Belgium called Dierks?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, that was proven to be Saxby’s handwriting. I’ve seen the original letterhead, and that handwriting is very different to the handwriting in the notebook. The style is unchanged from start to finish, too. There’s usually some degree of variation in notebooks, which are typically added to over time. This one appears to have been written in one sitting.’

  ‘As would happen if someone was making a copy?’ Davina said.

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Do you have any idea who wrote it?’

  ‘I believe Alice must have,’ Tayte said. ‘We know Phoebe Dodson had it when the Empress of Ireland left Quebec. Given what we now know, an educated guess is that Alice made the copy and left it with Phoebe for safekeeping should anything happen to her. I suspect she had the original on board the ship with her and that it perished when the ship went down, which would have made this copy all the more important to Saxby. He must have known he had no chance of getting the original back when he heard that the Empress of Ireland sank.’

  ‘So what does it contain?’ Davina asked.

  ‘Names and addresses mostly. It’s all written in code, but it was deciphered a long time ago. I have a decoded transcript to go with it—the handwriting is different again, so I guess it was penned by someone who worked for the government. The addresses are scattered all over the country.’

  ‘A spy ring?’

  ‘Could be. It doesn’t say, but I imagine those names and addresses were checked out at the time.’

  ‘Do you think someone’s after the names and addresses now?’

  ‘I can’t see why after all this time,’ Tayte said. ‘But then again, right now I don’t know why else anyone would want it.’

  ‘You said it mostly contained names and addresses. Was there something else?’

  ‘Yes, there was. There’s a further section of code at the back that no one seems to have been able to crack, apart from a few seemingly random words, that is. The transcript shows the exact same letters and numbers. That’s why I have the book now. Knowing what I know from my assignment, Bishop thought I was best placed to have a go at making sense of it all—to try to understand how it could be a motive for your husband’s murder.’

  ‘Well, two heads can be better than one,’ Davina said. ‘Why don’t we have a look at it together?’

  ‘I was hoping you’d say that. I told Bishop you might be able to help. Maybe there’s something about your husband that will register with you when you see it. Where are you?’

  ‘I was just on my way out. I’m taking a few paintings down to the marina. I thought the apartment could use a new look. After that, I thought I’d spend the rest of the afternoon on the boat. Why don’t you meet me there in an hour or so?’

  ‘Great,’ Tayte said. ‘I’ll—’

  Davina cut in. ‘Before you go, I wanted to tell you that I found a receipt earlier this morning. It’s probably nothing, but I thought you should know about it. It was handwritten and paid in cash to Saxby Electrical.’

  ‘Saxby?’ Tayte repeated. ‘Dean Saxby carried out electrical work for you?’

  ‘For my husband at the workshop, apparently. I didn’t know anything about it. It was just a few days before Lionel was killed. Didn’t Saxby mention it when you went to see him?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. Have you told Inspector Bishop?’

  ‘Not yet. I’ve been too busy with my boxes, and then you called.’

  ‘I’ll let him know,’ Tayte said. ‘Hold on to that receipt. I’m sure he’ll be interested to see it.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll see you shortly then.’

  Striding along the pontoon boards towards the Osprey at Gillingham Marina an hour after his phone call with Davina, Tayte was in high spirits, subconsciously whistling a tune from Calamity Jane because the wind had picked up. A keen gust flapped at his jacket and tousled his hair, causing him to look out across the estuary towards the eastern horizon. A grey cloud bank was building, perhaps heralding an end to the sunny days he’d become accustomed to since arriving in England. He was in high spirits nonetheless because he was thinking about Jean. It was close to four o’clock on Friday afternoon, and within twenty-four hours he knew she’d be back in London. He was buzzing at the thought of speaking to her again, but on the inside he remained nervous about what she was going to say, and whether or not she wanted to see him again. As he approached the Osprey and tried to refocus his thoughts, he hoped those grey clouds were not an ill omen.

  ‘JT!’

  Davina appeared on the deck of the Osprey and began waving at him, full of smiles and looking very nautical, Tayte thought, in a striped blue sweater and white jeans.

  Tayte stepped aboard. ‘Looks like the weather’s set to change.’

  ‘I know. Still, we’ve had a good run.’ She extended a hand to steady Tayte aboard. ‘We might as well go straight below,’ she added. ‘It looks like rain. That weather front will be here before we know it.’

  ‘I think I just felt a spot,’ Tayte said as he ducked his head beneath the beam and followed Davina down the steps into the main cabin.

  ‘Have a seat,’ Davina said. ‘Did you manage to tell Inspector Bishop about that receipt I found?’

  ‘Yes I did. I called him right after you told me. He said he was going to talk to Dean Saxby again, to find out why he didn’t mention it.’

  ‘Good,’ Davina said. ‘What can I get you to drink? There’s a bottle of Rioja open if you’d like some. I’m afraid I don’t have any tea or coffee aboard.’

  ‘Do you have any soda?’

  ‘Can of Coke?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘You don’t mind if I stick to wine, do you? I’ve already had a glass.’

  ‘No, not at all,’ Tayte said as he opened his briefcase and found the notebook. He threw Davina a smile. ‘It’s your boat.’

  Davina set their drinks down and sat beside him. ‘I can’t tell you how excited I’ve been since you called. Is that it?’ she added, eying the notebook as Tayte brought it into view and set it down on the table.

  ‘That’s it,’ Tayte said. ‘It’s quite unremarkable, as I said.’

  ‘It’s the contents that matter. People have died because of it—Phoebe Dodson and perhaps poor Lionel.’

  Tayte picked up his drink and downed half of it in one go. He opened the notebook. ‘Let’s take a look then, shall we? Hopefully we can work out why.’ He went back into his briefcase and found the deciphered transcript, which he set down between them. ‘The contents of the notebook itself won’t mean much,’ he added. ‘This transcript, on the other hand, shows all the names and addresses. Do any of them mean anything to you?’

  Davina looked through them, shaking her head between sips of wine.

  ‘Maybe they meant something to your husband?’ Tayte said.

  Davina came to the last name and address and dismissed it. ‘It’s possible, but I don’t recognise any of them myself.’

  ‘That’s too bad. There doesn’t seem to be any commonality among them, either. No repeat names, and geographica
lly they’re all over the place. I thought about looking to see if there was a family history connection between them. Maybe the census would tell us something about these people that’s not evident from their names and addresses alone.’

  Tayte finished his drink and held the can up to get the last drop.

  ‘You were thirsty,’ Davina said. ‘Would you like another one?’

  ‘Thanks, but that’s my quota of sugary beverages for today.’

  Davina just smiled and sipped her wine. ‘You said on the telephone that there was a section of code that hadn’t been deciphered.’

  Tayte nodded and flicked to the back of the notebook. ‘Here it is. It’s mostly numbers, as I said.’

  Davina studied them. ‘There are ten blocks,’ she said a moment later. ‘They all appear to be the same length.’

  Tayte already knew as much. ‘These letters beside them have been deciphered, but the words they form appear to be random.’ He read a few out. ‘Fortissimo. Antelope. Wedgwood. The numeric code would probably make sense of them if it could be worked out, but as things stand, we’ve no way of knowing what it means.’

  Davina looked up from the notebook, and she looked somewhat apologetic as she said, ‘Oh, I know what it means.’

  ‘You do? That’s great.’

  ‘Is it? I’m afraid you won’t think so when I tell you how I know.’

  Tayte’s eyes narrowed on her. ‘How do you mean?’

  Davina sighed and shifted along the seat, moving away from Tayte. ‘I suppose I do owe you an explanation,’ she said. ‘You’ve been very kind, and so helpful. When I first met you I thought you might prove too clever to fool, but thankfully I was wrong. I’ve had you fooled from the beginning—you and the police.’

  Tayte’s brow set into a deep furrow. ‘So you were behind all this—the break-ins at your homes and everything else?’

  ‘Yes, I was. I thought the break-ins would help to draw suspicion away from me, and I wanted to let you and Inspector Bishop know that someone was looking for something. Clever, don’t you think?’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Tayte said. ‘ So you killed your own husband?’

  ‘Not personally, no. I had a watertight alibi, remember? But yes, I was responsible. I wasn’t as close to Lionel as I might have led you and the police to believe.’

  ‘So you had someone else kill him? Was it Dean Saxby?’

  Davina laughed to herself. ‘No, he had nothing to do with any of this. When I recalled his visit to the workshop, I thought he could make for another useful distraction to the Inspector’s investigation, but that’s all it was.’

  ‘Then who did kill your husband? Why?’

  ‘For this notebook, of course,’ Davina said, tapping it with a fingernail. ‘I’ve been leading you towards it all this time, dropping clues in your lap—the telegram and those photographs of Lionel’s. I planted them in his workshop for you to find, and I led you to believe it was your idea to go there to look for the notebook. I knew it wasn’t there, but I also knew that the document shown in those photographs would tell you where it was.’

  ‘So you knew where it was all along?’

  ‘Not to begin with, but we soon worked it out, or rather, Lionel did. Getting access to it was proving to be the difficult part.’

  ‘Which is where I came in,’ Tayte said, an air of defeat in his tone.

  ‘Your arrival was as manna from heaven to me,’ Davina said, smiling broadly. ‘At first I just wanted to stop you. I knew when and why you were coming to England from the messages you left on my husband’s answering machine, so I had someone look out for you at Hamberley, where it was obvious you would go. Then I had you run off the road. I thought if that didn’t seriously injure you, or even kill you, then you would at least get the message and back off. But I’m glad you proved to be the stubborn type.’

  ‘You still haven’t really told me why you had your husband killed or who did it.’

  ‘You’re not the patient type, though, are you?’ Davina drank some more of her wine, as though they were still two people enjoying a sociable afternoon together. ‘It’s really very simple. Lionel discovered that I was having an affair. We argued and he told me he had the notebook, saying that I wasn’t getting a penny. I believed him, so I set up his murder—to shut him up about the affair and to get the notebook for myself. But Lionel didn’t have the notebook, of course, so I devised my little plan to get it through you.’

  Tayte scoffed. ‘So this is about money? Why am I not surprised?’

  ‘It really is the root of all evil, isn’t it?’ Davina said. ‘Which brings us back to the un-deciphered code at the back of the notebook. That’s the important bit.’

  ‘So what is it?’

  Davina laughed to herself, as if the idea of what the code represented excited her. ‘It couldn’t be cracked because it’s not code at all,’ she said. ‘They’re account numbers. The random words beside them are access codes.’

  ‘And they were hiding in plain view,’ Tayte said to himself as his eyes drifted back to the notebook. ‘Their meaning obscured by all the code around them.’ He turned back to Davina. ‘What are bank account numbers doing in a spy’s notebook?’

  ‘Among other things, I’m sure,’ Davina said, ‘Frank Saxby was also a fundraiser. The names and addresses at the front of the notebook are for those people who donated to the cause.’

  ‘To Germany?’ Tayte said, getting the picture.

  Davina nodded. ‘If you did check the census, you’d find that they all lived in grand homes with numerous members of staff to wait on them. They were wealthy British families who supported the kaiser and who gave generously to help fund Germany in the arms race. But the money Saxby raised didn’t all find its way to Germany. He was skimming a large percentage off the top for himself, which he exchanged for gold that he tucked away in Switzerland.’

  ‘And you think it’s still there now?’

  ‘I don’t see why it shouldn’t be, and we had to find out, didn’t we? Saxby was arrested and executed soon after he recovered the notebook. He had little to no chance of doing anything with the contents of his Swiss bank accounts, and he would have had no reason to think he had to until it was too late.’

  Tayte eyed Davina quizzically. ‘How do you know all this? It was a hundred years ago.’

  ‘Family stories,’ Davina said. ‘The telegram and the original photograph of Frank Saxby’s court martial document weren’t the only things passed down to Lionel. You see, Oscar Scanlon was Saxby’s accomplice—or so the story Lionel told me goes. Together they would identify wealthy families with reason to support Germany, offering them security and position under the kaiser’s rule when the inevitable war was won. But of course when Saxby was arrested, Oscar lost access to the notebook. Apparently, Saxby was paranoid about anyone else getting hold of the information, so he insisted on keeping the details on his person. Presumably, he didn’t trust Oscar enough to let him have his own copy.’

  Davina’s handbag was beside her on the seat. She reached into it and produced an envelope, which she held up for Tayte to see. ‘Oscar also handed this down. I suppose he thought it was all part of the legacy that would convince subsequent generations of Scanlons that the story about the kaiser’s war-fund gold was true.’

  Tayte squinted at the postmark. The letter was from Canada, dated 20 May 1914.

  ‘It’s a letter from Alice Stilwell to her father,’ Davina said, withdrawing it again. ‘Oscar must have intercepted it at Hamberley before it reached him. Oscar really was the devious type, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Can I see it?’ Tayte asked. From the date he knew that Alice must have sent it soon after she arrived in Quebec, and as it was addressed to Alice’s father, Tayte supposed it was an explanation about everything that had happened. As assignments went, it was a priceless record.

  Davina seemed to think
about it. Then she said, ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  A wry smile spread across Tayte face. ‘You’re playing it very cool for someone who’s just admitted all this to me. Presumably you’re doing so because your scheming isn’t over yet?’

  ‘No, not quite,’ Davina said. ‘I have to fool Inspector Bishop a little longer, and you’re going to help me with that, too.’

  Tayte laughed at the idea. He was about to ask how, when a sound from the boat’s bow drew his attention. It sounded like a door being opened and closed. He whirled around to see Raife Metcalfe coming towards him, his perennially sour expression fixed on Tayte every step of the way. Tayte thought he was imagining things at first. He certainly felt confused all of a sudden. When he realised he wasn’t hallucinating, he sprang to his feet—at least he tried to, but he found he had little control of his legs. He felt dizzy, as if he’d had too much to drink, and why were his eyelids beginning to feel so heavy?

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve been a naughty girl again,’ Davina said, pulling Tayte’s attention back to her. ‘Are you familiar with Rohypnol?’

  Tayte tried to say that he’d heard of it, but his words were so slurred he could barely understand them himself.

  ‘I slipped some pills into your drink,’ Davina continued. ‘It’s commonly known as the date-rape drug for obvious reasons.’ She leaned towards Tayte then and caressed his cheek. ‘Don’t worry. You’re not really my type.’

  Tayte tried to get up again, but all he managed to do was fall off his seat.

  Raife caught him and sat him up again. ‘Mr Tayte,’ he grinned. ‘I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to this.’

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Aboard the Osprey, Tayte was aware that his left cheek was stinging. His eyes peeled slowly open to see Davina sitting across the table in front of him, right before she slapped his face again. Tayte’s eyes opened more fully. He felt disorientated and confused.