London Calling

by Sara Sheridan

  As the castellated outline of Bermondsey Library came into view Vesta automatically thought, Eight minutes to go. Her mother always said that when you passed Bermondsey Library that was the time to make sure your coat was done up and to take a deep breath in. Bermondsey housed Biscuit City – the Peek Frean’s factory – and for miles the air smelled of baking butter biscuits. Sure enough, Vesta checked her coat, breathed in deeply and eight minutes later she got off the tram. The smog was so thick she could make out the chime of the bell on the corner-shop door more clearly than she could make out the shop itself. The smell of freshly baked rolls wafted towards her, and a paperboy with a large bag slung over his shoulder trudged along the pavement weighed down by his deliveries. It was still early. If she hurried she would catch her mother before she left for church.

  Vesta knew her way without having to see the street signs. Normally, she dreaded going home. Her family loved her and the Churchills were close, but sometimes they could be smothering. Much to her parents’ consternation, Vesta’s older brother had returned to the West Indies. At least he wasn’t gawped at in the street, he’d said. And it took a week before news of what he’d been up to could reach his mother and a week more before she could voice her objections. Vesta liked London but there had come a point where she couldn’t stay at home. The preferred option for most girls was to get married, of course. Vesta told herself she’d probably do that sometime but she wasn’t quite ready and, besides, she had Olympic typing speeds. They had joked during the London Games that if only there was a typing event, Vesta would get the gold.

  The lights in the front room were off but the pane over the Churchills’ front door glowed like a beacon. There was no need to knock. Like most houses round here, the large tarnished key sitting in the inside lock was rarely used.

  ‘It’s me!’ she called.

  ‘Lord Almighty, Vesta!’ came the cry from the kitchen and all fourteen stones of Mrs Churchill bustled down the hallway. She wrapped her arms tightly around her daughter.

  Vesta couldn’t help but burst into tears. Her mother’s soft skin smelled of soap and coconut oil, and her arms were strong. The yellow floral housecoat was comforting in its familiarity.

  Vesta sobbed, unable to restrain herself. ‘It’s Lindon, Mama. He’s dead.’

  ‘We know, we know. Daddy went to the phone box last night. He tried to ring you, child. Mrs Claremont gonna be glad to see you today! You did right to come home.’

  Behind the two women crowded the stocky figure of Mr Churchill and Vesta’s younger brother, Edmund, who was eating a thin slice of toast ladled with dripping of his mother’s making.

  ‘My little swan,’ Mrs Churchill said fondly, stroking Vesta’s hair. ‘Such terrible news to bring you back.’

  The family moved into the kitchen. The house was shabby yet warm and cosy, and to Vesta it would always feel like home. The hallway was painted buttery cream with pictures of tropical Sowers on the walls. A threadbare velvet chair with a huge cushion sat at the bottom of the stairs. Today, unusually, the hallway didn’t smell of cooking. Everyone had been out, Vesta realised. Last night they would have gone to the Claremonts’. Vesta dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief before dropping onto one of the chairs. Mr Churchill removed a boiling kettle from the stove and laid it to one side for his wife, and then sat down in front of the fire, his white shirt so stiff with starch it looked as if it was holding him in place.

  ‘Papers is full of it,’ he said, holding up the News of the World. ‘Poor Ella. I hope they aren’t letting her read this stuff.’

  Mrs Churchill made a pot of tea and brought Vesta a cup and saucer. ‘That boy wouldn’t hurt a fly,’ she said. ‘It’s not right! He was a talented kid not some drugged-up jazz fiend.’

  Vesta sipped her tea. Her mother handed her a slice of fresh bread. ‘Do you know who identified the body?’

  Mrs Claremont sucked her teeth. ‘His daddy went.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It was him. What do you think, Vesta? What kind of a question is that, child?’

  ‘I want to know what happened to him, Ma. Lindon wouldn’t kill himself. I’m sure of it.’

  Vesta’s parents exchanged a glance. The news last year that their only daughter had been instrumental in uncovering a Nazi money-laundering ring had made them proud but also concerned. When Vesta left home she had got herself a job in an insurance office and that was one thing; what she’d got up to subsequently sounded like it might be dangerous. They’d asked her to move back home in the autumn, feeling she would be safer in London where they could keep an eye on her. Vesta had refused. Now their friend and neighbour had lost a child. Mr Churchill’s eyes hardened. He’d be damned if he was going to lose one of his without a fight. Asking questions about Lindon’s death might prove a dangerous business. Certainly, the world for which Lindon had quit the Claremonts’ family home had proved fatal.

  ‘Vesta, I don’t want you getting into no trouble. You want to go digging, I could come with you,’ Mr Churchill offered.

  ‘I hope so, Daddy,’ Vesta smiled, ‘because everyone will be at church today. We need to find the musicians who knew Lindon. Anyone who played with him.’

  ‘Them boys don’t go to church,’ said Edmund, looking up from his breakfast.

  ‘They’ll go today,’ said Vesta firmly. ‘Some of them are bound to.’ She reached out and opened a pot of apple jelly, spooning a generous portion onto the crust of bread she’d hollowed out.

  ‘Ella Claremont is well known and she’s well liked, and so was Lindon. It’s a mark of respect. All the sinners will be lined up in a row. Reverend Thomas won’t know what hit him. It’ll be like Judgement Day, you’ll see. I want to get to the bottom of this.’

  Mr Churchill nodded and relaxed visibly. If his daughter was set to go digging for information, the local church was possibly the safest place she could do so.

  ‘Vesta, child,’ said her mother, ‘I knew you had a talent all along but I had no idea it was going to be for something like this.’

  ‘Who can uncover the ways of the Lord?’ Vesta lifted a manicured finger skywards.

  Edmund giggled.

  ‘Now that I won’t have,’ Mr Churchill cut in. ‘Not in my house. Show some respect.’

  ‘Sorry, Daddy.’ He probably had a point. ‘And if I’m going to do anything dangerous, I promise, you’ll be the first to know. I don’t want you worrying.’

  Chapter 15

  Anyone singing the blues is in a deep pit yelling for help.

  Drury Lane ran from High Holborn to Aldwych. It was far too grand and wide to merit being called a lane, and between the theatres it was peppered with pubs. Mirabelle decided to take a bus northwards and start at the Holborn end so she was working her way towards town. It shouldn’t take too long to figure out where Lindon Claremont had been supposed to play that afternoon. The Embankment was almost deserted. The heavy chimes of Big Ben striking twelve resounded across the water. The Sunday bus service was infrequent but it would give her time to think. She stood alone at the stop and ran through the events of Thursday night, slotting in the information she’d just gathered from Adler.

  Rose Bellamy Gore, in a full-length yellow evening dress, had gone to Mac’s with her cousin Harry and Lavinia Blyth. They had all probably been drunk (if not when they arrived then shortly after) and it was late. Rose had taken an interest in the band. She’d engaged Lindon in conversation. Sometime between 3 and 4 a.m. she’d given him her cigarette case on a whim and then left, either with Lindon or with someone else unknown or, now Mirabelle came to consider it, alone. Lavinia had phoned her father, concerned for Rose’s safety. Why she had done this was still unclear, particularly if Rose hadn’t left with Lindon. Mirabelle realised she should check the phone box Lavinia had used and establish how long it would have taken her to walk there and back from Mac’s. One way or ano
ther, Lavinia must have been sure that Rose was in trouble. According to the police report she had been positive that Lindon was guilty. Indeed, why no one else in Mac’s had stood up for the sax player, if he hadn’t left with the girl, was another mystery. But it certainly seemed that the other musicians must have agreed with Lavinia’s version of events or the police would have had no case at all to hold him. As for Barney, Mirabelle didn’t trust him but she had no doubt he’d only lie if it were in his interests to do so – which appeared to be the case. In the event, like the musicians, he had agreed with Lavinia’s version of what happened at Mac’s that night. Chief Inspector Green had a good reputation as a competent officer. Even if the band had scarpered that night, he’d no doubt have tracked them down. So, the logical conclusion was that they must all have agreed with each other – not necessarily in the detail but in the broad outline of events.

  Meanwhile, when he received Lavinia’s call, Paul Blyth got in touch with the police who put out a description of Rose immediately and started the search. Unaware of this, Rose had headed north-east for Coram’s Fields where her dress was somehow torn. Coram’s Fields, Mirabelle knew, was surrounded by railings. She and Jack had once attended a bandstand concert there – an old-fashioned brass band on a June afternoon. It was out of the way and they had taken the chance of being seen together to grab a little freedom. Many of the flowerbeds had been given over to growing vegetables to supplement rations. They probably still were. After the concert she and Jack had eaten buttered scones in the Bloomsbury Hotel and had taken a room.

  ‘A chap can’t be expected to wait,’ Jack insisted. ‘Not on a Sunday.’

  The down-at-heel area around Russell Square seemed an unlikely place for a debutante to go for thrills and spills. It was hardly the haunt of someone Didi Blyth had called ‘smart’.

  Mirabelle put out her hand and wrapped her gloved fingers round the cold bus stop. It helped her to focus. Now, if Rose was with a man (Lindon or otherwise) and they were going to the park for the usual reasons, why would they choose Coram’s Fields over Inn the Park? That made no sense. From Windmill Street, Inn the Park was not much further and there were no railings to climb. At this point in the story the girl had simply disappeared. Murder was most likely. But in that case, given she hadn’t been found, her killer would have had to remove her body. Was there a car? That brought a whole series of logistical problems into the equation, or even a romantic Sight of fancy should Rose prove still to be alive – elopement? The scrap of her dress was the only indication of violence. Lindon, believing the police were looking for him, fled to the south coast. Out of fear, as he’d said, or guilt? But if he was guilty, surely he would have used his time to get away somewhere other than the south coast. Or was his faith in Vesta so strong he felt she’d be able to get him off no matter what?

  As her bus neared the stop, Mirabelle put out her hand. She hopped on and settled into a seat on the lower deck. Tapping her fingers on the side of the seat as she thought things through, Mirabelle had to admit that Detective Constable Adler’s logic was impeccable. A woman with a torn evening dress wouldn’t stay out. She would go home if she could. It was difficult to imagine what could be keeping Rose from Upper Belgrave Street if the story wasn’t the way he had related it. It was a conundrum. As she mused, she could feel the cold radiating from the bus’s steamed up windows and she longed to lay her forehead on the glass. Of course, it looked as if Lindon was guilty. But Mirabelle kept returning to the picture in her mind of the boy, soaked, sitting with his saxophone case in the hallway outside McGuigan & McGuigan on Friday morning. He was no murderer and he was certainly no master criminal. His clothes might have been wet but they had been immaculate. He hadn’t been scratched or bruised by someone fighting him off. There was no sign of blood. Most importantly, his demeanour had not been that of a murderer. Something about him belied the very idea.

  Yet not much more than twenty-four hours later, Lindon had been taken into custody where he either had lost all hope and killed himself or had been murdered inside one of the country’s most high-profile police stations. No matter what Vesta thought, the former was more likely. Killing someone inside a locked cell was a tricky business. Even in her SOE days only the most expert agent would attempt it and only then for a very good reason.

  ‘You all right, love?’ A man smoking a cigarette leaned over.

  Mirabelle started. She’d been almost hammering the seat with frantic fingers, she realised.

  ‘I’m trying to remember a tune,’ she said. ‘Got it now. “Too Young”.’

  The man laughed. ‘Rightio,’ he said and retreated back to his seat.

  Mirabelle stilled herself. She could see why the police thought Rose was dead and Lindon had killed her. But she still wasn’t convinced by either conclusion.

  At High Holborn Mirabelle got off the Routemaster and headed for Drury Lane. Somewhere here was the pub where Lindon had meant to spend Sunday afternoon. Mirabelle shrugged off the uncomfortable feeling she was travelling in the wake of his ghost.

  Working methodically, she peered in each door and walked smartly between the hostelries to keep as warm as possible. The first two bars didn’t have live music. The third was a musty drinking den with a sticky carpet and an incongruous American jukebox blasting out Perry Como. The White Hart looked more promising. Its black-and-white sign creaked in the slight breeze, and from the doorway Mirabelle could hear a woman singing. She sounded like Dinah Shore. Inside, it was deserted, except for an old man sipping a pint of porter at a low table and a solitary barman, engaged in fixing something on the gantry. Mirabelle slipped onto a bar stool and caught his attention. She ordered a hot whisky. She needed to warm up.

  ‘We’ve no sugar,’ the barman said, ‘but I can do one with cloves and a squeeze of Jif.’

  Mirabelle shuddered. The whisky would probably be of such poor quality, blended into oblivion, that it would hardly matter. Still, Jif was a step too far.

  ‘Thanks. With cloves will be fine.’ Mirabelle removed her gloves and turned to listen to the music.

  On a tiny stage at one end of the smoke-filled room was a thin black girl in a red dress. She was accompanied by an extraordinarily fat pianist, perched in an unstable fashion on a stool. Halfway up one wall there was a large stove pumping welcome heat into the almost empty bar area.

  ‘I wondered about some jazz,’ Mirabelle confided in the barman. ‘I heard there was live jazz on a Sunday somewhere down here.’

  ‘That’s here all right. It’s usually jazz, anyway.’ He laid a steaming glass on a beer mat and took the shilling Mirabelle offered. ‘All the White Hart pubs got jazz on a Sunday. Our regular fella couldn’t make it so we had to take what we could get. I prefer this, myself. It’s more gentle, ain’t it? They’re only rehearsing now ’cause we’re quiet.’

  ‘She has a lovely voice.’

  Mirabelle had danced to this tune, ‘April In Paris’, with Jack. He always said he wanted to take her to Paris though Mirabelle teased him that it ought to be the other way round. Mirabelle’s mother came from the eighth arrondissement near the Parc Monceau. If they visited the French capital it would be Mirabelle who’d know the city best. She’d wanted to show him the shabby streets of the Marais and the tiny dressmaker’s shop where her mother had her clothes made and, further into town, the glorious Petit Palais with its high-ceilinged splendour and astonishing art. Mirabelle sipped the hot whisky and felt the circulation return to her fingers as her heart fluttered. Jack seemed ever present in London – it was impossible to walk very far without tripping over a memory in the street, fresh as the day she’d left it behind.

  The girl finished the number and leaned over to talk to the pianist who played a section again with a more staccato touch. The girl nodded. He made a note on a sheet of paper and then closed the piano lid, and they came to the bar together.

  ‘May I buy you a drink?’
Mirabelle offered.

  Neither the pianist nor the singer hesitated. The fat man asked for a beer, the girl a port and lemon.

  ‘You have a lovely voice.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The barman poured the drinks.

  ‘And some nuts, please,’ Mirabelle insisted, handing over a coupon from her handbag.

  The barman brought a packet, which the girl opened immediately. She crammed the first handful into her mouth and swallowed almost without chewing.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  Mirabelle watched her. Her nails were ragged and she was too thin.

  ‘If you don’t mind me asking, my dear,’ Mirabelle was curious, ‘how long is it since you ate?’

  The girl’s gaze fell to the floor. ‘We moved house, and there ain’t no proper kitchen. And I get confused with the coupons.’

  ‘It’s usually jazz in here on Sunday, isn’t it? But what you’re playing is different.’

  ‘I hope the crowd like it.’ The girl crunched on.

  ‘Late booking, was it?’

  ‘Yeah.’ The pianist lifted his pint. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Well, that’s lucky.’

  ‘Some sax player snuffed it.’

  ‘Lindon,’ the girl said wistfully. ‘His name was Lindon.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, they needed someone fast. We usually only work Friday and Saturday. We got proper jobs, see, but it worked out all right. You’re belting those down, Charlotte,’ the pianist pointed out. ‘Steady.’

  ‘Why don’t you and I have some lunch, my dear? I’m hungry and I’d appreciate some company. My treat,’ Mirabelle smiled.