He waved away the compliment. ‘I hated the thought of a man who worked for me facing the gallows. Yet the law must take its course.’
‘You doubted his innocence?’
He closed his eyes. ‘All the evidence pointed in his direction.’
‘That evidence was circumstantial.’
‘But convincing.’ Keary leaned back in his chair as the desserts arrived. ‘Rufus Paul, no less, examined the body, and found a thread of clothing in the poor girl’s hair which matched a jersey in Barnes’ wardrobe.’
‘Barnes was Dolly Benson’s lover. An innocent explanation for Rufus Paul’s discovery was entirely possible. Under cross-examination, Mr Paul would have been bound to concede that the stray thread proved nothing.’
‘Even so, things looked black for poor Barnes.’ He shook his head. ‘Presumably you hired an agent to make enquiries into the case?’
‘I made sure I was fully informed, yes. I came across Claude Linacre on my first visit to the Galeria Garcia.’
‘And you deduced that he was a murderer? Or did you rely on intuition?’
Rachel pursed her lips. ‘Linacre frequented the Inanity, and more than one young woman there had caught his eye, only to become repelled by his bizarre tastes. He paid handsomely for the pleasure of inflicting grievous wounds on at least two of them. Did you not hear rumours?’
‘Certainly he was known to be fond of girls of… shall we say, the commoner classes. But he seemed harmless enough. If every selfish libertine resorted to homicide, the population would be decimated.’ Keary’s easy grin remained in place, but she noticed his brow tightening. ‘Do let me into the secret. What led you to accuse young Claude Linacre of murder? And what was so compelling about the case you made that he felt driven to take poison?’
The young waiter arrived with the coffee. He seemed sulky, perhaps because Keary only had eyes for Rachel.
‘All I shall say is that his death mirrored his life. He was a coward.’
Keary placed a sinewy hand upon hers. ‘I’ve met few women capable of such discretion,’ he murmured. ‘And what of the latest outrage? Dare I ask if you played any part in… securing justice for Lawrence Pardoe’s victim?’
Rachel withdrew her hand. ‘My understanding is that he killed himself inside a locked room, after writing out a detailed confession.’
‘As a keen student of criminology, you’ll know that confessions are often unreliable.’
She opened her eyes wide. ‘I forgot! Wasn’t Pardoe connected with the Inanity too? Perhaps you know something I don’t?’
He flinched, as if bitten by a trusted pet. ‘Sadly, no. Pardoe was an odd fellow. Between us, I never cared too much for either him or Linacre. Although I never dreamed they were capable of murder, their attitudes struck me as… rather sordid.’
‘Very perceptive of you.’
‘I have an instinct about people sometimes. As I do about you. I won’t beat about the bush. I find you utterly fascinating.’
‘How flattering.’ Rachel moved her chair back, as if preparing to leave. ‘Truly, I’m thrilled by the prospect of seeing you at the Inanity.’
He leaned across the table. ‘Come to the theatre right now, and I’ll conduct you on a personal tour backstage.’
‘I’m not sure the Widow Bianchi would approve,’ Rachel said lightly.
He blinked. ‘Chiara and I aren’t married, you know. We merely have… an understanding.’
‘I’m sure she is very understanding,’ Rachel smiled. ‘I’m afraid my chauffeur is waiting.’
‘What a pity. Then perhaps after the show?’
‘Perhaps.’ Rising to her feet, she extended her hand. ‘If you are free to see me.’
He studied her calm features, and for a moment his composure wavered. Swallowing, he said, ‘You know, Rachel, you definitely remind me of your father.’
‘I am very different from the Judge,’ she said. ‘But I do believe in justice.’
12
‘How good of you to see me at short notice,’ Jacob said, as Mrs Mundy lifted the white cup – stamped in red with Fuller’s name – to her thin lips.
Squeezing the lemon into his tea, he gave an ingratiating smile which she failed to return. His head hurt, and he doubted a cup of Earl Grey would improve it. After oversleeping, he’d caught the train to Oxford by the skin of his teeth.
He and Elaine had stayed up late following after a trip to see Bitter Sweet, the perfect antidote to an overdose of murder, mystery, and magicians. Afterwards, they’d drunk a few cocktails in an excitingly seedy bar in Long Acre, and ended up singing ‘I’ll See You Again’ all the way back to Amwell Street. Once home, Elaine had poured them each a generous measure of her mother’s gin, and they’d indulged in some woozy fumbling on the sofa before she’d disentangled herself, and announced she was going to bed. Jacob hadn’t been quite drunk enough to suggest that he accompany her.
After waking with a hangover, he’d foregone his usual hearty breakfast, and now his stomach was rumbling. He cast a covetous glance at the next table, and an elderly couple tucking into fat slices of walnut cake, complete with frosted icing. Unfortunately, Mrs Mundy had ordered for them both before his arrival. Presumably she was accustomed to making decisions for others.
She’d waited for him at the table nearest the window, looking out at the students striding along Cornmarket as though they owned not only the street but the whole world. She was knitting a child’s scarf from bright green wool. Small, with silver hair in a bob and a wiry frame snugly fitted in an ankle-length grey fox-fur coat, she was a woman of few words. When she did speak, she did so with a pronounced Scottish accent, and in a brisk, no-nonsense manner that must have stood her in good stead over the past thirty years.
Jacob tried again. ‘I’m sure your work at the Orphans’ Home keeps you extremely busy.’
‘I needed to call in at the bank, so meeting you here was convenient. You will understand that I prefer not to entertain a newspaperman at the home.’
‘Have you been disturbed by the press?’ Jacob’s expression was a study in sympathetic concern.
‘Very severely, Mr Flint.’ A knitting needle tapped the table for emphasis. ‘An institution such as ours depends on maintaining a settled routine in order to function efficiently. This whole affair has been shockingly disruptive. Poor Miss Hayes worked at the home for less than six months, but your colleagues from Fleet Street descended like vultures as soon as it was known that we’d employed her.’
‘How upsetting. A crime of this sort has untold ramifications. I travelled to Southend yesterday to meet her sister. She’s naturally anxious that our readers understand that Mary-Jane was a thoroughly decent woman.’
‘Indeed she was. The whole business distresses me so much that I cannot bear to read about it. Goodness only knows how her kith and kin must feel.’
‘Quite so, Mrs Mundy.’
‘Very well, what do you want from me? A taxi is due to collect me, so I can get back to my desk. Five minutes should be ample. I doubt I can tell you anything that isn’t already in the public domain.’
‘Why did Mary-Jane leave the home? It seems odd. She didn’t have another job to go to, yet she left Oxford, and returned to London.’
Mrs Mundy sighed. ‘We had such high hopes of her. Her curriculum vitae was first class, and when she was interviewed by myself and the former chair of trustees, we were impressed. The position she applied for was new. I hope to retire before long, and we regarded the role of deputy matron as a stepping stone. Mary-Jane seemed to have the credentials to make an ideal successor. Unfortunately, she’d underestimated the gulf between her former duties and the diverse responsibilities of deputy matron, and she found it difficult to adjust.’
‘She told you this?’
‘Oh yes, she was honest to a fault. I did my utmost to encourage her. Coping with promotion is never as easy as it seems. She had a dreadful inferiority complex. Each time she told me that she could
n’t possibly cope with the role of matron, I told her bluntly she was talking through her hat. I felt equally uncertain many years ago, when I took charge of the home.’
Jacob found it hard to imagine that this small, forceful woman was ever uncertain about anything. ‘She wasn’t reassured?’
‘Thirty years ago, she said, the home was smaller, and its ambitions more limited. She’d been happy working as a nurse. Looking after the complicated financial arrangements of a charitable institution, dealing with trustees, and supervising all the staff, all that was foreign to her.’
‘So she walked out?’
‘Her terms of employment required a month’s notice, but she was so downhearted and anxious to leave that I agreed – with the trustees’ reluctant consent – to waive that obligation.’ Mrs Mundy sniffed her Earl Grey, and duly satisfied, took a sip. ‘As a result, I am back to square one, still in search of someone to take over so that I can enjoy a peaceful retirement in St Andrews, knowing the home is in safe hands.’
‘Did she ever mention the name of Lawrence Pardoe?’
‘The man who committed the atrocity?’ Mrs Mundy’s eye-brows shot up. ‘You’re suggesting a prior acquaintance between them?’
‘It does seem that Pardoe knew her, yes.’
Her small eyes subjected him to piercing scrutiny. ‘I can honestly say that she never discussed him with me.’
‘Are you sure about that, Mrs Mundy?’
‘Really, Mr Flint!’ Her disdain cut like a whip. ‘I had hoped you were a different class of person from the other reporters who have besieged our home, trying to fashion a scandal out of thin air, and making it more difficult for us to carry out our vital work in caring for girls who begin their lives with unenviable disadvantages. I am disappointed to find I am mistaken.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Jacob was instantly abashed. ‘I really did not mean—’
‘I have honoured my promise, and given you five minutes. I must bid you good morning.’
Picking up her knitting bag, she jumped to her feet. Jacob half rose and held out his hand, but she ignored him, and walked swiftly out into the hubbub of Cornmarket. He made no attempt to follow her. He’d mishandled the conversation, and needed to console himself with a slab of the mouth-watering walnut cake.
While exchanging idle banter with a young waitress, pert and neat in her black uniform and white pinafore, he wondered if he’d learned more than he’d realised. Mrs Mundy’s assertion that Mary-Jane had never discussed Pardoe struck him as credible, but she’d chosen her words with care. On reflection, her reply resembled a lawyer’s quibble.
As he savoured the crushed walnuts, he decided that the matron had failed to tell him the whole truth, seeking to distract him with a show of synthetic outrage. Instinct told him that not only did Mary-Jane know Pardoe, but Mrs Mundy was well aware of it.
*
As the train rattled through the countryside on its way back to Paddington, Jacob found himself assailed by second thoughts. Even if Mrs Mundy’s reply had been disingenuous, she probably felt justified in prevaricating with a journalist. He’d questioned her word, no doubt a rare occurrence during her three decades as matron of the Orphans’ Home. Hostility was inevitable.
Mrs Mundy, like Agnes Dyson, attributed Mary-Jane’s departure from Oxford to an inability to cope with extra responsibility. Plausible, but Jacob wondered if Mary-Jane had been romantically involved with Pardoe at some stage in her life. Perhaps they had encountered each other in London, only for Mary-Jane’s ambition to lead her to end the liaison, and move to Oxford. Supposing Pardoe had pursued her, he might have persuaded her to give up her new job at the home, and return to the capital. Pardoe’s vast wealth meant she was under no immediate pressure to find work, while she deliberated about their future together. If she’d finally decided against committing herself to him, his anger…
Perhaps. Supposing. Might. If.
Jacob looked out of the window of his carriage, frightening a flock of sheep with his frustrated glare. Why deceive himself? He was none the wiser about Mary-Jane’s murder, just as he was no closer to ferreting out the truth about Rachel Savernake.
*
Immediately after speaking to Sara Delamere, he’d despatched a telegram to Rachel, pleading for another meeting. As soon as he walked through the front door of Clarion House, he demanded to know whether a message had arrived for him. Peggy broke off from reading about Harold Lloyd’s first talkie to announce that someone – she didn’t know who it was – had handed in a cheap envelope bearing his name. Ripping it open, he found an anonymous note which simply said, Meet me at the Essex Head at one.
He recognised the careful but unsophisticated hand. Stanley Thurlow, the detective constable he’d encountered outside Pardoe’s home, must have a titbit for him. Their regular meeting place was a public house on the corner of Essex Street and the Strand. Thurlow was fond of a drink, as well as the occasional flutter on the horses, but his young bride had recently given birth to their first child, and money was tight. In return for dribs and drabs of police gossip, Jacob was happy to stand a few rounds, and give his friend a present in cash ‘to buy something for the baby’. There was no harm in it. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.
*
‘I brought fresh towels,’ Mrs Trueman said.
She stood at the top of the stairs leading onto the roof of the house. Stretching in front of her lay a kidney-shaped swimming pool. Three-quarters of the roof had been glassed in to form a vast conservatory; the rest of it formed a roof garden with seats and plant tubs, edged by a knee-high wall and overlooking the rear of the property and the shed and garden far below. There was space in the conservatory for a large sitting area, as well as a gramophone at the far end, and an area for dancing under the stars. The heating system ensured that even on a crisp London morning, the temperature was closer to that of Cannes or Monte Carlo.
Rachel loved the water. On Gaunt, swimming offered the fantasy of escape. In London, a mansion with a rooftop pool was a suitably extravagant way of spending a slice of the Savernake fortune. She hauled herself out, the red and kelly-green striped maillot clinging to her body. Pulling off her rubber swim cap, she shook her dark hair.
‘Fancy a dip?’
Mrs Trueman scowled at the maillot’s plunging neckline. ‘Some of us have work to do.’
Rachel reached for one of the Turkish towels, and started drying herself. ‘Your hands are red raw. I’ll find you extra help if you need it.’
The older woman shook her head. ‘You’re not suggesting we hire someone recommended by the Orphans’ Home?’
Rachel gave a wicked smile. ‘Is it such an insane idea?’
‘For goodness’ sake! You’ve such a peculiar sense of humour, I never know whether you’re joking or not.’
‘You don’t need to do this,’ Rachel said. ‘You don’t need to stay here. With the money you two have put away in the bank…’
‘Don’t twist what I say. You know you can depend on us.’
‘Yes,’ Rachel said. ‘I know.’
*
Jacob made sure that two foaming pints of beer were standing on the counter by the time Thurlow marched into the saloon bar. Today he looked bleary-eyed, and he apologised in case he fell asleep over his beer. The baby was teething, and had kept both parents up all night.
‘Here’s to domestic bliss,’ Jacob said, as they clinked glasses.
‘Cheers, Flinty.’ Thurlow grinned. ‘Might be drinking to something else before long,’
‘Your good lady isn’t expecting again?’
‘Bloody hell, no. At least if she is, she hasn’t dared to break the news yet.’ The grin broadened. ‘Keep it under your hat, but soon you’ll need to show me a bit of respect. I’ve been tipped the wink that I’ll be a detective sergeant by Christmas.’
Jacob slapped him on the back. ‘Congratulations, Stan.’
‘Shouldn’t count my chickens, but I’ve booked a week in Brighton to cel
ebrate. The weather will be foul, but who cares? Not that I’m the only one with something to brag about. Read your piece about that carry-on in South Audley Street.’ He laid a beefy paw on Jacob’s arm. ‘Couldn’t believe my bloody eyes when you showed up. Figured out who tipped you off?’
The smoky air was as noxious as a pea-souper, and Jacob indulged in a diversionary coughing fit. ‘Who knows? I don’t suppose it matters. I gather Scotland Yard considers the case closed.’
‘Yes, well. Superintendent Chadwick is a good bloke, all for a quiet life, while old Mulhearn is as happy as a dog with two whatsits. Funny thing is, Oakes is all on edge. Doesn’t seem convinced that Pardoe simply sent his staff away, then topped himself.’
‘Why not?’
‘According to him, it’s too neat. But life doesn’t always have to be a shambles, does it? We’re all entitled to a spot of luck, once in a while.’
‘A smart fellow like Oakes must have something to go on.’
Thurlow drained his glass, and Jacob signalled to the barman for a refill.
‘Cheers, Flinty. I’m betting you’re spot on.’
‘Is that why you wanted to see me?’
‘There is something.’ Thurlow gulped down his beer. ‘Seems like nothing to me, but it bothers Oakes.’
‘Go on.’ Jacob fished a banknote out of his jacket, and slid it into the policeman’s vast palm. ‘Find a babysitter, and treat Mrs T to a slap-up meal with my best regards.’
‘You’re a pal, Flinty.’
Jacob could smell the beer fumes on Thurlow’s breath. ‘So what is on Oakes’ mind?’
‘We found a chess piece next to the packing case where Pardoe hid Mary-Jane Hayes’ head. A black pawn.’
‘What do you make of that?’
‘Pardoe didn’t play chess, if his confidential secretary is to be believed. That fellow is a keen ’un, plays in tournaments and captains the Kilburn Chess Club, but he claims Pardoe had no interest in the game.’
‘What’s so unusual about that?’
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