‘You arranged to meet him at the church bell tower then?’
‘No. Nothing more was said. He left the room and shortly after, I left too.’
‘So the fact of your meeting at the church later that night was pure coincidence?’
Dulcie’s face registered the hopelessness of her situation but she said nothing more that would redeem her before the jury. ‘I didn’t meet him, sir. I only saw…’ She didn’t manage to finish the sentence.
‘Tell us, Miss Long, what happened after you left the room.’
Dulcie paused but not for too long – not long enough to be registered as recalling a story of invention. Her eyelids flickered and she looked like a child by the school railings, wondering where her mother was.
‘I went downstairs, to the kitchen, and collected my coat. There was nobody else there.’
‘Yes? Then what?’ Impatience had crept in to Mr Hicks’s measured tones.
‘It wasn’t time yet to collect Miss Charlotte and I didn’t want anyone to see my eye. I decided to wait outside.’ She stopped talking for a moment and Mr Hicks looked down at his notes.
‘According to the inspector’s report, the night was cold but dry. The moon was hidden by cloud.’ He regarded the witness. ‘Did you have a torch on you?’
‘No sir, but there was some light coming from the windows of the house. I walked around the garden then sat in an old summerhouse for I don’t know how long but I got cold. Then I thought I’d go to the churchyard, I’d seen it on my way up earlier.’
‘An unusual choice for a stroll in the middle of the night. Most people would be too frightened if they thought they were going to be alone. But you knew you’d be meeting Mr Curtis, didn’t you?’
‘No, sir, I didn’t!’ Dulcie almost raised her voice but brought herself back again. ‘It’s just, well, I ain’t frightened of no ghosts, I don’t believe in them. I thought, if I couldn’t get inside, I could wait on a bench in the church or something for a bit.’
There was a shuffle beside Louisa. She’d almost forgotten she was sitting with the others. Lord Redesdale and Pamela were exchanging glances: they believed in ghosts, though it was something they had to keep to themselves as Lady Redesdale firmly decried it as tosh. The two of them insisted there had been water dripping in the path for several nights by the window of Lord Redesdale’s child-proof room, yet no tap was there nor puddle collected.
‘I walked into the graveyard,’ Dulcie continued, and heads turned towards her. It was a circus and the maid on the stand was the freak show. ‘It was dark but I suppose the church was easy to see. It’s got white bricks, it glowed almost.’ She withdrew slightly into herself at that. ‘I started to walk towards the back where I thought the door might be and then I saw…’
Everyone knew what Dulcie saw, and everyone held their breath.
‘Tell the jury, Miss Long.’
‘Mr Curtis, dead, sir.’ Dulcie’s head hung low and her knuckles loosened their grip; she swayed slightly but did not faint. The thought came into Louisa’s mind of a cold slice of apple pie she had put on a plate for herself in the pantry; she had planned to eat it when they returned, as a bolstering treat after what she had anticipated would be a long and difficult day. She pictured a spoonful of the soft fruit and pastry going into her mouth, but it turned to ashes.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The walk from Debenham and Freebody to the Vine Street station was only ten minutes. Usually. With a young woman kicking and shouting for most of it as Guy and Mary almost carried her along Oxford Street, it took closer to half an hour. By the time they staggered in through the open door of the station, Guy was sweating and Mary had taken her hat off and was clutching it instead.
One of the old hands was at the front desk, his handlebar moustache so luxuriant it looked as if a small badger had settled in for a nap beneath his nose. He grinned at Guy and Mary, neither of whom were exhibiting the disciplined poise required of police officers but who had clearly brought in a catch worth bragging about.
‘What have we here, then?’ he said. It was a joke amongst policemen to talk like the cartoons in the Daily Express.
Guy, still holding an elbow, marched up to the desk, panting. ‘A young woman, caught shoplifting in Debenham and Freebody, sir,’ he said. ‘We need an interview room straight away.’
At this the policeman’s eyebrow was raised. ‘We do?’
‘Me and Constable Moon, sir.’
‘Constable Moon can go and tidy herself up. I’ll take you into an interview room and fetch Inspector Cornish, I know he’s about.’ He started to look down a list on his desk, checking which room was free.
Mary stepped back, fury clouding her face, but she said nothing. She didn’t let go of the hostage’s arm, though she was no longer trying to get away but stood there, sulky and silent. Guy leaned forward, his voice lowered but firm. ‘Excuse me, sir, but Constable Moon was a vital part of this arrest. She needs to be in the interview room too.’
The policeman shrugged and the badger turned over in its sleep. ‘As you wish. Cornish will deal with it. Go to the third door on the left down there.’
* * *
In the interview room, Guy asked Mary to pat down the young woman’s skirts. She kicked and wriggled, shouting that she didn’t have nothing but eventually gave up when Guy said, ‘Give it up, miss. You’re in here,’ and gestured to the dirty brown and buff painted walls, the closed metal door with its peek-a-boo square slot.
Mary scrabbled her fingers around the sides of the skirt, looking for an opening like she was drawing curtains, and found beneath the upper layer two bolts of lavender silk. She pulled them out and laid them on the table. ‘What’s that, then?’
The woman shrugged.
‘Your name?’ said Guy, his notebook and pencil at the ready.
‘Elsie White.’
‘Age and place of residence?’
‘Nineteen. Thirty-six Dobson Road.’
‘South of the river, I suppose?’ said Guy.
‘If you like,’ she said, smiling at her own insolence. It probably wasn’t even her real name.
Just as Guy was about to threaten her with a charge for obstruction of the law, the door clanged open and Cornish strode in, all big checks and shoulders, blocking out the light from the hall. He clocked Elsie and Mary and grinned at Guy. ‘Landed two fish, have you?’
‘No, sir,’ said Guy, ‘just the one.’ He inclined his head at Elsie, still standing in the middle of the room. None of them had thought to use the chairs.
‘Who are you then?’ barked Cornish at Mary.
‘Constable Moon, sir,’ she said. ‘I was on duty with Sergeant Sullivan, in plain clothes. Undercover, you see—’
Cornish waved her away with a hand that looked recently manicured, plump flesh peeking from beneath clean, short nails. ‘Fine.’ He turned back to Guy. ‘What happened, and am I interested?’
Guy felt the blood rush in his ears. ‘We were in Debenham and Freebody’s haberdashery department at about eleven o’clock this morning when we noticed that the shopgirls had their eyes on a tall lady who was walking around not buying anything.’
Cornish dragged a chair out, squealing its back legs and sat down heavily. Guy stopped talking while the inspector pulled out a cigar, clipped off the end and lit it. He did not hurry and all the while the rest of them stood motionless, as if cursed in a fairy tale. He nodded at Guy, and the spell was broken.
‘While everyone’s attention was elsewhere, Constable Moon spotted this woman here acting suspiciously and as she was exiting the department, Constable Moon ran after her—’
‘Forget about that for a minute,’ said Cornish, exhaling a grey wreath of smoke that floated to the ceiling and hovered there. ‘This tall woman, that’s what I’m interested in. What did she look like?’
Guy was thrown by this. ‘She wore a dark coat and hat, expensive I’d say.’ He faltered. ‘I’m not sure I saw much else, sir.’ Damn his eyesight. Damn it,
damn it. What the hell had she looked like? What had he missed?
‘It was my fault, sir,’ said Mary quickly, and Cornish pulled himself up a little straighter. ‘I distracted Sergeant Sullivan, I mean. I told him to come in my direction, to apprehend this woman.’
‘Your foolishness allowed Alice Diamond to get away,’ said Cornish, plucking each word like bits between his teeth.
Guy looked at Mary in alarm. So the shop manager was right. Had he said something? Had he telephoned to the station? It was possible.
Cornish puffed again. ‘She’s clever though, I’ll grant her that. Even if you had apprehended her, it’s unlikely she’d have had anything about her person. She leaves that to her lowly subjects.’ He exhaled on the last word, blowing smoke directly onto Elsie’s face; she grimaced but did not cough. ‘Find out who she was going to pass it on to.’
‘Sir?’
‘The fence, Sullivan.’
With one hand on his thigh, Cornish heaved himself up. ‘Take the statement, make the notes and lock her up. You’ve done well.’
The roar in Guy’s ears subsided.
‘But you could have done better. A lot better. Get your spectacles checked, Sullivan.’ The door banged shut.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
After Dulcie’s interview, court was adjourned until after lunch, which was spent by their desultory group in a café around the corner. It gave Louisa a chill to think of the many bereaved and criminal persons that had passed an hour there, awaiting a verdict. Charlotte was still fragile, and walked between Lord and Lady Redesdale, who bore her with stoicism. Pamela looked exhausted after the ordeal of her interview but refused any comments of sympathy. ‘It’s nothing compared to what Charlotte is going through.’
Unable to bear the stifling fug of kitchen heat and bacon fat in the café, Louisa stepped outside and saw Ted and Clara whispering on the pavement. Instinctively, she withdrew and stood slightly hidden in the doorway. They were smoking cigarettes, huddled by a lamp-post. Louisa strained to hear although the street was relatively quiet. Impossibly, it seemed everyone else was blithely continuing with a normal day in town.
‘What if they ask you again where you were that night?’ said Ted.
Clara, her pink coat chalky from the street dust, pulled a face. ‘They won’t, but you don’t need to worry. I’m not going to spill any beans.’
‘The beans,’ Ted muttered.
‘For Chrissakes!’ said Clara. ‘Whatever it is you English say.’
Ted looked up and seemed to catch sight of Louisa’s coat in the doorway. ‘We’d better go back in.’ He ground his cigarette out on the pavement and stalked back into the café but Louisa had already gone before him and was sitting back in her seat before he had closed the door behind Clara.
What beans? Lord De Clifford and The American were colluding in some kind of secret from that night but whether it was connected to the murder, Louisa couldn’t guess at. Whatever it was, it was serious enough that they needed to keep it from the police. All she could conclude was that neither Ted nor Clara were where they said they had been when Adrian’s murder was committed.
The more Louisa thought about it, looking across at Nancy and her friends, the more she thought how odd it was that, apart from Charlotte of course, none of them seemed terribly sad about Adrian Curtis’s death. There was shock at the murder and how sudden it had been but Louisa had yet to hear anyone say they missed him or wished it hadn’t happened. From what she had seen, Adrian had been boorish and unattractive, but surely that wasn’t a reason to kill him?
There was something else puzzling too: why would Dulcie admit to the theft but not to the murder? Obviously, one crime was less serious than the other but if she had killed Adrian, would she not deny everything and try to wash the stain of accusation clean away? Whatever the answer, the mysterious conversation between Ted and Clara made Dulcie’s arrest questionable. Louisa had to hold on to her original instinct: that Dulcie was sincere when she’d said she was going straight. The theft had to have been the final job she did for the Forty. The murder was done by someone else. But who?
CHAPTER TWENTY
Back in the court, the ladies and gentlemen of the jury were as immobile as wooden soldiers propped up in the same places, their blank expressions unchanged. A pathologist, Mr Stuart-Jones, was brought to the stand, a cool-mannered man with shoes that shone like a colonel’s. In a curt, dry series of responses to the coroner, he confirmed the death of the victim, the broken bones sustained in the fall, the cause of death – a cervical fracture – and the appearance of bruises on his neck and upper arms that were concurrent with a struggle having occurred moments before. Broken glasses, confirmed to have been worn by the victim as part of his costume, were found on the floor of the bell tower, which further indicated a struggle.
Immediately afterwards, Detective Inspector Monroe was called, his purple nose as swollen as ever. Mr Hicks had asked him to summarise the whereabouts of the guests in the house at the deduced time of murder.
‘There were a number of guests in the house,’ began Monroe portentously. ‘Of those playing the treasure hunt, I will state the rooms they were in at the moment the alarm was first raised. Lord De Clifford was in the boot room, Miss Clara Fischer in the dining room, Mr Sebastian Atlas and Miss Phoebe Morgan in the drawing room—’
The coroner had given a cough. ‘Sorry, do go on.’
‘Miss Charlotte Curtis and Miss Nancy Mitford were in the morning room, Mr Oliver Watney in the telephone cupboard, Miss Pamela Mitford in the smoking room. The maid, Miss Louisa Cannon, was in the kitchen. The remaining guests, Lord and Lady Redesdale, the children and the servants were all in their respective bedrooms except for Mrs Windsor who was in her sitting room and the groom, Hooper, in his room above the stables. They were not asleep but they did not hear the commotion.’
‘Could you also confirm for the court what was found upon Miss Long’s person when interviewed?’
‘A platinum ring with sapphire and diamond stones, a pair of gold and ruby earrings, a pearl necklace, a sapphire and diamond bracelet and a gold necklace inset with rubies and diamonds. These were all items that Miss Iris Mitford confirmed belonged to her.’
‘Thank you, Detective Inspector, you have been most concise.’
Monroe stood down and, it seemed to Louisa, forced himself to resist the instinct to take a bow.
There were further closing remarks but Louisa did not listen. She could only focus on the pathetic figure of Dulcie, slumped on the bench. As the jury filed out to consider their verdict, Dulcie’s words ran around her mind as they had for days, like a Hornby train set: ‘It’s always us lot that gets suspected first.’ Surely Dulcie was innocent? She couldn’t have had the strength to push a man out of a window and it didn’t make sense that she would meet him in the church after they had had the row in the bedroom. Nor did Louisa like what she had overheard Ted and Clara saying, though she couldn’t say what it meant. Only that this case was not as black and white as DI Monroe claimed it to be.
In less than twenty minutes the jury returned. One woman, who looked to be not much older than Dulcie, had pink eyes that betrayed tears but the rest remained as impenetrable as ever. The foreman stood at Mr Hicks’ request and when asked, replied they were returning a verdict of unlawful killing.
‘A young man’s life has been tragically and senselessly cut short,’ Mr Hicks orated to the room, which was absent of sound. He may have looked like a man who had worn nothing in his life more daring than a pink carnation in his buttonhole but he delivered his final remarks like a Roman emperor in a toga with a crown of golden leaves around his head.
‘Mr Adrian Curtis was a man who had much to look forward to in life and who might have made a significant contribution to society. Miss Dulcie Long, I hereby officially charge you with theft and murder in the first degree. You will be remanded in prison to await trial without bail.’ There was no gavel to be banged, only a sheaf of papers shuffled as the po
liceman led Dulcie away. This time, she wore handcuffs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
In the interview room, Cornish had slammed the door shut behind him. Elsie White, still standing in the middle of the room from when Mary had searched her skirts, started to snicker but closed up when Guy turned on her. Anger boiled inside him and he wanted to throw the chair at her, to see it splinter into matchsticks on the floor. Mary put a hand out to him, palm up.
‘Don’t,’ she said, as if she knew. ‘We’ll go out again, and again, and again. We’ll get her.’
Elsie laughed then, a rumble that rose from her belly and escaped through a wide-open mouth, grey teeth showing. ‘You’ll never get her,’ she gasped as the last sniggers rolled out and finished with a hiss. ‘You can’t get none of us.’
Mary walked up behind Elsie then and with a strength Guy had not suspected was there, used her hands to propel Elsie by the shoulders, forcing her to sit down on a chair by one side of the table. Mary indicated to Guy that the two of them should sit on the chairs opposite. Elsie’s mouth hung slack as she watched them take their positions. Guy laid out his notebook and pencil before him.
‘I think you’ll find, Miss White,’ he began, ‘that we have got you here, in possession of stolen goods and with Constable Moon and myself able to testify to your theft.’
Elsie tried a defiant smile but failed.
‘If the judge is in a good mood, you might get away with … Oh, what do you think, Constable Moon?’
Mary crossed her arms and put a mock-thoughtful expression on her face. ‘If he’s feeling very reasonable, I suppose Miss White would only be looking at a few months.’
Still, Elsie was silent.
‘I have a funny feeling,’ said Guy, ‘that Miss White here will show a bit of previous. I think we could be looking at eighteen months’ hard labour.’
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