Twenty-Four
Stanton Hall was a Gothic pile, situated halfway between Whitebridge and Preston. It had originally been the county seat of the de Stanton family, but crippling death duties – allied with the personal excesses of some of the lords de Stanton – had meant that, some fifty years earlier, the family had had to sell it.
It had been converted into what was then known as a private lunatic asylum, and half a century later it was still basically in the same line of business, although, since ‘lunatic’ was now a dirty word, it had been reborn as the Stanton Hall Mental Healthcare Centre.
Elizabeth Driver arrived at the place at just after three o’clock, and by half-past three was sitting in the director’s office, looking out on to lush lawns and tennis courts.
The director himself was sitting opposite her. His face was slightly flushed, and he looked, thought Driver, like a man who felt that his small and cosy empire had suddenly come under attack – and who was prepared to do whatever it took to defend it.
She wasn’t unduly worried by either his attitude or his determination, because while he might be considered a heavyweight around the corridors of Stanton Hall, she regularly ate men like him for breakfast.
‘I don’t think I really want to talk to any member of the press about our work here, Miss Driver,’ the director said, trying to sound both firm and authoritative.
‘Is that right?’ Driver asked, interestedly.
‘Yes, I’m afraid it is.’
‘Then why I am here – in your office – at all?’
‘Because I am well aware that reporters such as yourself often find it difficult to take “no” for an answer, and I thought it would save time if, instead of allowing you to badger my underlings, you should hear of my decision directly from the horse’s mouth.’
Elizabeth Driver smiled sweetly. ‘How kind of you to spare me the time,’ she said.
‘I considered it only polite.’
‘And what a load of old bollocks you can come out with, when you really put your mind to it.’
‘I beg your pardon!’
‘You agreed to this meeting for one reason, and one reason alone – you wanted to see if you could find out just how damaging the story I was planning to run could possibly be.’
‘That’s … er … not quite how I would have put it, Miss Driver,’ the director said.
This was easy, Driver thought. Almost too easy.
‘It’s not how you would have put it, but it’s the truth nonetheless,’ she said airily. ‘Well, you can relax. I’m not running a story at all. The only reason I’m here is as a favour to a friend.’
‘What kind of favour?’ the director asked suspiciously.
‘He needs information on a patient,’ Driver said. ‘Or perhaps the man in question is an ex-patient by now. That’s one of the things you can clear up for me.’
An appropriate look of outrage came to the director’s face. ‘That is quite out of the question.’
‘Is it?’ Driver asked. She held up her right hand for him to inspect. ‘Look at these sweet little fingers of mine,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t think they had the power to destroy people, would you? But show them a typewriter, and that’s exactly what they have.’
‘You’re threatening me!’ the director said accusingly.
‘What a clever man you are to have noticed that,’ Driver replied.
‘It won’t work,’ the director told her. ‘This is one of the finest institutions of its kind in the country. You couldn’t possibly uncover anything that would embarrass us.’
‘Who said anything about uncovering anything?’ Driver wondered. ‘Have you ever read my column in the Gazette?’
‘I may have glanced at it once or twice,’ the director admitted. ‘I can’t say that I particularly—’
‘And didn’t it occur to you, clever man that you are, that some of the accusations I made were totally outrageous?’ Driver interrupted him.
‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact, it did.’
‘There you are, then. No need for me to uncover anything at all, is there? I’ll just make it up.’
‘If you do that, I’ll sue!’
‘Of course you will. And, in the end, the Gazette will no doubt have to print an apology and pay you compensation. But by then, the damage to your reputation – and to the reputation of this institution – will have been done.’
‘And you’d lose your job,’ the director blustered.
Driver laughed again. ‘For all your cleverness, you really have no idea of how popular journalism works, do you?’ she asked. ‘What my boss wants to do is to sell newspapers – and selling newspapers is just what my stuff does. He wouldn’t sack me just because he had to pay out a few thousand pounds. The revenue from the increased sales would make that seem like a mere drop in the ocean.’
‘You’re a monster!’ the director said.
‘Yes, I am,’ Driver agreed. ‘That’s the other reason that my boss likes me so much.’
‘Who is this patient who you want the information on?’ the director asked, knowing when he’d been beaten.
Elizabeth Driver opened her handbag. ‘His second name escapes me for the moment, but that’s all right, because I’ve got it written on a slip of paper, somewhere in here.’ She began to rummage through the contents of the bag. ‘But I do remember the first name, because it’s so unusual. He’s called Brunel.’
The director’s already sagging jowls sagged even more. ‘Oh, him!’ he said.
Bob Rutter, sitting in Elizabeth Driver’s Jaguar outside the main entrance to Stanton Hall, was reviewing in his mind everything he’d done since he’d left the Drum and Monkey.
The first thing, of course, had been his ‘little bit of business’ with Monika Paniatowski. It had been harder work to get her to agree to it than he’d expected – so much so that, for a moment, he’d even contemplated telling her the truth. But, in the end, the truth had not been necessary, and Monika had signed on the dotted line.
He’d gone to the library next, where he’d immersed himself in the Whitebridge Telegraph’s births, marriages and deaths columns of a much earlier era.
And it was in those columns that he’d found exactly what he was looking for! Because despite Pogo’s belief that Brunel had probably chosen the wrong town for his search, there was the proof positive – in the birth announcements for May 1921 – that he hadn’t.
After this breakthrough, the rest had been easy, and it had taken no more than a couple of phone calls to point him in the direction of Stanton Hall.
He looked up from his musings and saw that Elizabeth had emerged from the main entrance, and was walking towards him.
Her hair was growing lighter in colour by the day, he noted. She must have decided to let the dye grow out, and in a couple of months she would be back to being the natural blonde she’d been when he’d first met her.
There’d been a time when that would have bothered him – because, as a blonde, she would have reminded him too much of his lost love, Monika Paniatowski. And there’d been a time, too, when he’d drawn comfort from the fact that her hair was so dark, because that had reminded him of his other lost love, Maria.
How petty such thoughts and feelings seemed, now that his whole life was about to change so dramatically, he told himself.
Elizabeth had reached the car, and climbed into the passenger seat.
‘Well?’ Rutter asked.
‘Cast your mind back an hour or so,’ Driver said. ‘We were debating, were we not, who would be best at finding the information you needed? You thought it was you, and, naturally, I thought it was me.’
Rutter smiled. ‘And who was right?’ he asked.
‘Perhaps we were both right. Perhaps you’d have done just as well as I did. But we’ll never know for certain, will we?’
‘You got it all!’ Rutter said delightedly.
‘I got it all,’ Driver confirmed. ‘You worked out where we needed to look for the information
, and I teased the relevant facts out. We’re a good team.’
‘We are,’ Rutter agreed. ‘We’re a very good team.’
Paniatowski had been expecting the call, but when the phone rang, she still felt her stomach lurch.
‘It’s me!’ said the voice at the other end of the line. ‘Ronnie!’
That was what Scranton had been calling himself for the previous couple of days, though she’d never asked him to.
Ronnie!
As if adding a few letters to his name would miraculously make him younger or more attractive!
‘How nice to hear your voice,’ she said.
‘Are we still on for tonight? Dinner and dancing?’
‘Yes, of course.’
There was a slight pause, then Scranton said, ‘The thing is, I thought we might kick things off a little earlier than we planned.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’ve got this bottle of rather fine champagne, you see – it was given to me by one of my admirers in the movement – and I thought we could crack that open before we set off.’
‘Sounds like a nice idea.’
‘So shall I come round to your flat at, say, around six.’
Paniatowski gasped with horror.
‘No!’ she said, before she could stop herself.
‘No?’ Scranton repeated, puzzled. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You don’t sound fine.’
‘Got something caught in my throat, that’s all.’
‘Lucky something,’ Scranton said, and chuckled.
She should have agreed to Scranton’s suggestion, Paniatowski told herself. But she simply couldn’t – simply wouldn’t – have the vile man in her flat.
‘I’ve got an old friend staying with me,’ she lied. ‘A woman I met at police college. It wouldn’t be the same with her there, so why don’t we go to your place instead?’
‘Ah, there’s a problem with that, too,’ Scranton said awkwardly.
‘Have you got a friend staying as well?’
‘No, but my flat’s … well, I spend so little time there, as a result of my work with the movement, that I’m afraid it’s rather a mess.’
She was losing him, she told herself. What she should do – what the operation demanded she do – was to backtrack, and say she’d find some way to get her fictitious friend out of the house.
But she couldn’t do it!
‘I’m sure your place can’t be much more of a mess than mine,’ she said. ‘And even if it is, it won’t really matter, will it. There’ll be us, and the champagne, and I doubt if we’ll notice anything else.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ Scranton agreed reluctantly. ‘Shall I give you the address?’
‘If you wouldn’t mind.’
Paniatowski took down the address and said her goodbyes. Then she rushed to the toilet and was violently sick.
As Bob Rutter walked along the corridors of police headquarters he heard someone whistling, and realized that that someone was him.
And why shouldn’t he whistle? he asked himself. What he’d discovered at Stanton Hall alone had been enough to whistle about, and, since then, discoveries and revelations had been almost falling into his lap. The case wasn’t over – it wouldn’t be over until, as the Americans said, the fat lady sang – but it was as near to over as made no difference.
He knocked on Woodend’s door, opened it without waiting to be asked, and found himself looking around an empty office.
It was then that he remembered that the doctor had ordered Charlie to rest, and that for once Charlie had taken the doctor’s advice.
He was a little disappointed that Woodend was not there to take delivery of the large buff envelope he held in his hand, but not unduly so. After all, he argued, what the envelope contained was not so much his contribution to the case as a member of the team as it was his parting gift to the team.
The idea had not occurred to him in quite that form before, but now that it had, he rather liked it, and picking up a pen from the desk he wrote ‘A Parting Gift’ across the front of the envelope. He paused for a second, then added several exclamation marks, and placed the envelope on the corner of the desk, where Woodend couldn’t miss it.
Rutter drove straight from police headquarters to the Royal Victoria, where he had every intention of dazzling Liz with his brilliance. But it was not to be. The porter on the reception desk told him that she had gone out for a while – and, unlike earlier, he really was disappointed this time.
‘Would you like to wait for her in her suite, Inspector Rutter?’ the porter asked.
‘Would that be all right, do you think?’
‘Well, I’m sure Miss Driver wouldn’t mind,’ the porter told him, ‘and as far as the hotel’s concerned,’ he winked heavily, ‘you’re practically a full-time guest as it is.’
There was a time when Rutter would have been offended or embarrassed – or something – by the comment, but those days were long gone. And thinking about it, he decided that, after his afternoon’s work, he had earned a little luxury.
He took the lift up to the top floor, and let himself into Driver’s suite with the key the porter had given him. Once inside, he kicked off his shoes and sat down in one of the armchairs which were covered with leather as smooth and soft as a newborn baby’s skin.
He wondered how he should fill in the time until Liz got back.
He could watch television, but there was never anything interesting on it at that time of day.
He could run a king-sized bath, and still be soaking in it when Driver returned.
Or he could …
And suddenly, he knew exactly what he wanted to do.
‘You told me you wouldn’t notice the way the place looked,’ Ron Scranton said with a touch of rebuke in his voice, as he stood in his kitchenette with the bottle of champagne in his hands.
Paniatowski, who was sitting in one of the flat’s two shabby armchairs, glanced around her and decided it was not really a flat at all, but a glorified bed-sit with its own bathroom.
‘I know what I told you,’ she agreed, ‘but this place is still not quite what I expected. I somehow thought that a man who was so important to the movement would live somewhere a little less … well, basic.’
The surprise she was showing was good from a tactical point of view, she realized – it fitted in very well with the plan of action she had mapped out earlier – but it was a genuine surprise, too.
‘I’m not a man who notices material things,’ Scranton said defensively. ‘All my attention is focused on the cause that I would willingly give up my life for. Besides, I much prefer it that the movement puts the money it could have spent on me into the fighting fund.’
‘Of course,’ Paniatowski said, as if she should have thought of that herself. ‘And it has the additional advantage of fooling our enemies into believing that you’re much less important than you actually are.’
‘Well, exactly!’ Scranton said, embracing the idea with an almost desperate enthusiasm. ‘They’d look at this place, and they’d think, “He can’t be up to much.” But they couldn’t be more wrong, could they?’
He waited for Paniatowski to agree with him, and when she said nothing he quickly popped the cork, filled two glasses, and took the drinks over to the armchair corner of the room.
‘To us!’ he said, handing Paniatowski her glass and holding out his own for the toast.
‘To the movement,’ Paniatowski replied.
Scranton looked disappointed. ‘I thought we could put the movement behind us for a couple of hours.’
Paniatowski laughed. ‘As if the movement could ever be completely out of the thoughts of a man like you,’ she scoffed.
‘A man like me is still a man, if you know what I mean,’ Scranton said.
Paniatowski nodded her head. ‘Yes, I think I do.’
‘And you led me to believe that, as unlikely as it seemed to me at first, you found me attractive.’
‘I do find you attractive.’
‘Then prove it!’
‘How?’
Scranton gulped. ‘We’re all alone here, and there are clean sheets on the bed,’ he said.
Paniatowski put down her glass, walked across the room to the bed, sat down and began slowly unbuttoning her blouse.
Oh please, don’t make me take all my clothes off, she prayed to a god she had long ago ceased to believe in. I’ll do it if I have to. But please don’t make me!
Scranton’s eyes were bulging with excitement.
‘I’ve been waiting for this moment since the first time I saw you,’ he moaned softly, as Paniatowski popped open buttons until there were none left to pop, and the blouse fell open. ‘I’ve been dreaming about it.’
Paniatowski sighed regretfully, closed the blouse again, and began to button it up.
‘What’s the matter?’ Scranton asked, in a voice which was almost a sob.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t,’ Paniatowski said.
‘You … you can’t?’
‘I think it must be this room. I know you’ve given me all kinds of reasons why it should be so mean and scruffy, and I accept them. Really I do. But there’s still a part of me that says, “Maybe he’s not that important after all, Monika. Maybe he’s just a pathetic little nobody who’s lying about his importance because he desperately wants to sleep with you.” ’
‘A nobody?’ Scranton repeated.
‘I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings,’ Paniatowski said contritely. ‘I didn’t mean to. But you must see how I could get that impression.’
Scranton gulped, then, with a great show of reluctance, he said, ‘Would a nobody have been authorized, by the very top people in the party, to purge society in the most extreme way possible?’
‘Do you mean …?’ Paniatowski began.
‘I … I … might as well tell you, since you’ve already guessed,’ Scranton said. ‘Those two tramps who were killed …’
‘Yes?’
‘It was done on my direct orders.’
Paniatowski had finished buttoning her blouse, and now she stood up. ‘How very interesting,’ she said. ‘Ronald Arthur Scranton, I am arresting you for the murders of Philip Turner and another vagrant, as yet unidentified.’
Dying Fall Page 22