Sweet Poison

by David Roberts

  ‘He was about thirty, I should imagine, spoke very good English – oh, and he had one of those duelling scars like the officers used to get at their military academies, or that was what I was told. He had blue eyes but black hair: I remember that well because it was so strange and because he stared at me so hard.’

  ‘Good, that’s very good, Verity,’ he said, and she was pleased that he was pleased, but thinking of Stille made her shiver.

  ‘I don’t want ever to go back there, David,’ she said, putting her hand on his.

  ‘No, there is no need. They will know who you are by now so you wouldn’t be admitted anyway. Verity, I think I should warn you to be a bit careful.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ she said, withdrawing her hand.

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean they would hurt you or anything but they will be annoyed that you made a fool of them. Don’t open your door unless you are expecting someone – that sort of thing. At least you have Max,’ he said smiling. The little dog, hearing his name, growled softly. Changing the subject, he inquired, ‘And have you found out who killed the General yet?’

  ‘No, not yet but . . .’ She was going to say, ‘but Friedberg says it was Bishop Haycraft,’ but decided not to confide in him. He wasn’t her lover, he wasn’t even her friend now. He was a stranger and a stranger who frightened her. David had told her that information was power so she would keep this information to herself, at least for the time being.

  ‘But what?’ he said. ‘How much do you know about Craig? My hunch is that if you want to know who killed the man you ought to look back at his life – women, enemies, that sort of thing – though why anyone should care who killed him I cannot think. Every day hundreds of good men are killed – killed by people like him.’

  ‘Oh, don’t exaggerate, David.’

  ‘I’m not exaggerating. I don’t mean killed here in England – not yet, at least – but in Europe, in Germany in particular, quite innocent people are being killed every day. But then, they are foreigners so I suppose it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Don’t sneer at me, David. I expect innocent people are being killed in Russia too, am I right?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he replied, oddly subdued by her question.

  ‘But you should know. Isn’t that where you have been?’

  ‘I have, yes, and it is wonderful there, you have no idea, Verity.’ His eyes shone and Verity thought, David, what has happened to you, but she said only, ‘I have to go now.’

  ‘Yes’, he said, looking at his watch, ‘so do I. See you about, Verity.’

  ‘I expect so,’ she said and put some coins on the table. ‘Come on, Max,’ she said, waking the dog who had a knack of falling asleep whenever his mistress informed him she wanted him to stay quiet. Max growled gently at David and Verity smiled. She kissed him on the cheek and they parted, he quite unconscious of the looks of admiration he attracted as he strode out into the busy street.

  14

  Wednesday Evening

  When Verity got back to the flat she felt exhausted, as though she had been grappling with a monster – a sea monster, she thought, with innumerable legs and no discernible face. She longed to see somebody normal, somebody clean who was not hiding some secret loyalty, so she telephoned Edward. It would be comforting, she thought, to hear his nasal voice with its glassy, upper-class accent, so confident and reassuring. Fenton answered the telephone and informed her, disapprovingly, that his master had just gone out.

  ‘Where’s he gone?’ she asked innocently.

  There was a pause and then Fenton said, ‘I’m afraid I am not at liberty to say, miss.’

  Verity was put out. She had clearly got on Fenton’s wrong side and he was now determined to keep her at bay. He no doubt considered she was a bad influence and impertinent to boot.

  ‘Please, Fenton, I need to talk to Lord Edward urgently.’

  Fenton was again silent, perhaps remembering an earlier instruction from his master to give Verity Browne every assistance. ‘He told me, miss, that he was taking Miss Pageant out to dinner and then accompanying her to the Cocoanut Grove where, I understand, she performs.’

  Verity was knocked sideways. When had he made this rendezvous and why had he kept it from her? ‘Oh yes, of course, I had forgotten, he did tell me,’ she managed to say. Was Edward as devious as David? What a fool she was to believe in any man’s veracity. She felt as if she was going to be sick. Was she jealous? Of course not! You couldn’t be jealous of someone who meant nothing to you even if they did prove to be dishonest. Why was Edward taking Amy Pageant out to dinner and going on to the club with her? Well, she could guess why: because he admired her. She knew that already. But why tonight? He had not invited Amy when they had met her with her stepfather that afternoon, or had he? Damn it! Damn him!

  ‘Do you know where they are dining, Fenton?’

  ‘No, miss,’ he said firmly, making it plain that he had divulged as much information as he thought she deserved.

  ‘Thank you, Fenton. Will you tell Lord Edward I rang?’

  ‘Certainly, miss, I am glad to be have been of service. Good evening, miss.’

  It was doubtless fortunate that Verity could not see how well Amy and Edward got on. No girl enjoys seeing a man she has come to consider a partner – a business partner or at least a partner in crime – drool all over the daughter of one of the chief suspects. Where Verity was down to earth, pushy, bubbling with ideas and determined to untangle any knot which might be puzzling her, Amy was soft, soothing and deliciously vulnerable. In reality she was tough, intelligent and highly ambitious. She liked Edward but, more to the point, she thought he might be useful in furthering her career. She knew she was good and had no intention of remaining a night-club singer for very much longer. Even when speaking, her voice had a husky, almost masculine timbre which Edward found fascinating, and when she looked at him with her large, brown eyes he found her irresistible. Amy was rather short-sighted but refused to wear spectacles so she liked to get close to the person to whom she was talking to see the expression on their face. The intimacy this engendered, even in the highly respectable surroundings of the Savoy Hotel, was beginning to have its effect on Edward. By the time she had told him of her lonely childhood with her maiden aunts in Corner Brook and how it felt to be deprived of a mother and abandoned by a father, he was close to declaring his undying love but, fortunately or not, before he made any rash declarations, Amy glanced at her watch and gave a scream. She was due on stage in twenty minutes. They rushed out of the hotel, Edward scattering largesse to waiters, captured a taxi from a fat gentleman almost apoplectic with good food and bad temper, and arrived at the Cocoanut Grove with just minutes to spare.

  Edward, seated at a small table with a bottle of champagne open in front of him, marvelled that when Amy appeared on the tiny stage she seemed as relaxed and unflurried as if she had been waiting in her dressing-room – if that was what the tiny damp room she changed in could be called – for half an hour exercising her vocal chords instead of feeding him lobster on the end of her fork at the Savoy. He was swept away by the colour in her voice, the naked sexuality as she sang of love and treachery, parting and pain. The club was almost full – perhaps because news of Amy’s talent was spreading or perhaps because rumours of the police investigation had given the Cocoanut Grove a spurious glamour – but Amy silenced the chatter and stilled the clink of glasses as she poured forth her emotion like strong, black, liquid chocolate. Verity would have been nauseated to see the effect on Edward, but even she would hardly have been able to deny that one day soon Amy Pageant was going to be a star.

  Ten minutes into Amy’s set, Edward was annoyed to feel someone at his shoulder demanding attention. He was just about to tell whoever it was to go to hell when he saw in the darkness the face of Captain Gordon, the dapper host of the Cocoanut Grove whom Inspector Pride was so anxious to interview. Edward slipped out of his seat and accompanied Gordon to the little office behind the dance room. In the bru
tal neon light Edward was shocked to see that he was a shadow of the supercilious man-about-town who had insulted him just over a week before when Hermione had run off with Charlie Lomax. White-faced, red-eyed, his hair no longer oiled to his head but ruffled and dirty, he was clearly a man on the run. He was frightened – Edward could almost smell the fear filtered through sweat, and stale cigarettes.

  ‘Please forgive me, Lord Edward,’ the man began – he seemed to be shivering with fear or at least anticipation. ‘I was hoping to see you. I tried to get to see you at your rooms but they said you were not there.’

  ‘For God’s sake, man, what’s the matter? What’s happened? Here, have a cigarette.’

  Edward proffered Gordon his cigarette case but the man’s hands were shaking too much to open it. ‘Here, let me,’ said Edward, opening the gold case. He extracted two De Reszke Virginians and lit one for the Captain and one for himself. Gordon took a long drag and it seemed to help him. He was wearing what might once have been evening-dress but by now he had no jacket or tie and the shirt was grubby and stained with what looked like blood. He had a gash on his cheek as if he had cut himself or been cut, which possibly accounted for the blood on his shirt.

  ‘Calm down, Gordon,’ said Edward and the authority in his voice seemed to have a steadying effect on the bedraggled figure before him. ‘Sit down and tell me all about it. Is it the police you are afraid of? Much better make a clean breast of it.’

  Gordon slumped into the manager’s chair where for so many months he had dispensed threats and favours and Edward leaned against a filing cabinet, studying the man who sat in front of him smoking furiously.

  ‘So tell me, is it the police you are running from?’ Edward repeated at last. ‘You’re a bloody fool if you think they won’t catch up with you in the end.’

  ‘God no,’ said Gordon, ‘not the police. It’s them . . .’ His voice shook.

  ‘Who’s “them”?’

  ‘They call themselves Triads – ever heard of them?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘They are Chinese gangsters – Hong Kong, really. They have been in London now for a year or more and they are engaged in trying to take over the dope trade.’

  ‘Is that very profitable?’ said Edward naïvely.

  For a moment Gordon was his old contemptuous self again. ‘For Christ’s sake, Corinth, what are you – some sort of idiot? Profitable! The dope trade in London alone is worth several million pounds a year. People are looking for kicks that alcohol just can’t provide. Heroin and cocaine are very fashionable and very expensive. I used to think it was ironic that this place was called the Cocoanut Grove, see?’

  ‘So what happens then?’ said Edward. ‘How does the dope get distributed? Through places like this?’

  ‘Yes, and through people like me, of course. The stuff comes into Liverpool on boats from the Far East but the Chinese need “respectable” people like me to get it around. Charlie Lomax was one of my runners.’

  ‘Runners?’ queried Edward.

  ‘There are a lot of young men in so-called society who have to live expensively on nothing at all. I don’t suppose,’ he sneered, ‘you can imagine what it means not to have a five pound note in the world and be expected to escort some neighing girl to a dance in Belgrave Square.’

  ‘Why do it then?’

  ‘Because that’s all he knows – for God’s sake, I’m not Sigmund Freud. What do I care? All I need to know is that Lomax and his like take dope into the heart of “society”. Christ! If the old dowagers knew what a sewer their little girls were swimming in – the sharks and the rats biting at their little angels’ heels . . . Anyway,’ and his anger seemed to leave him, ‘that’s what happens.’

  ‘But something went wrong, presumably?’

  ‘Yes, that bloody idiot Lomax got hooked on the stuff himself. Instead of selling it, he was using it and you just can’t get away with that.’

  ‘So who killed him and almost killed Hermione Weaver?’

  ‘Yes, that was bad,’ said Gordon, lowering his head on to his chest. ‘I had to give them the information – they forced me . . .’ Gordon shuddered as though he was reliving an experience he wanted very much to forget. ‘I had to tell them why I was short of what I owed.’

  ‘The Triads?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They went off after Lomax?’

  ‘I guess so – yes, Lomax was a marked man.’

  ‘And Hermione Weaver?’

  ‘I suppose she was there when they came to call. Maybe they thought she was his girlfriend – I don’t know. Anyway, they wouldn’t have wanted to leave witnesses.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go to the police?’

  ‘Are you mad? They’d have killed me straight off.’

  ‘The police would have given you protection.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Corinth! Haven’t you been listening? These men are not like us. They don’t let things like “police protection” stand in their way if they want to kill someone. They laugh at the police. Bobbies on the beat with no guns! They think it’s hysterical.’

  ‘So why did you go on the run?’

  ‘Well, however hard I tried to say I had told the police nothing they didn’t believe me and they wanted their money. Then one of their thugs came after me. I saw him, thank God, just before I went into my flat, so I fled. I made an old girlfriend take me in, but yesterday I thought I saw . . .’ He shuddered. ‘I thought I saw his oriental face when I peered out of the window so today I have been running around London waiting till it was dark.’

  ‘Has Lord Weaver got anything to do with this?’ said Edward sharply.

  ‘The dope? No, I don’t think so. It’s private enterprise, don’t you know,’ he said, curling his lips into what might have been a smile.

  ‘But why did you think I would be here tonight?’

  ‘If you hadn’t been here I would have tried again at those rooms of yours, but I was afraid they wouldn’t let me in – looking like this, I mean.’ He gestured with his hand and Edward had to agree that Albany porters would have been highly suspicious.

  ‘But I still don’t understand what you think I can do,’ Edward said.

  ‘I want you to take me to the police and convince them I’m not making all this up about the Triads and how dangerous they are.’

  ‘I really don’t know if I believe you myself,’ said Edward thinly. ‘I mean, it all sounds so melodramatic.’

  ‘Oh God, I thought I could convince you.’ He suddenly slumped back in his seat as if he were ready to give up.

  ‘Look here, Gordon, brace up. I don’t doubt that you are genuinely at the end of your tether. I can see too that you are badly frightened. You’ve got yourself in one hell of a hole but I think you are rather exaggerating what these Triad people can do.’

  ‘Oh Christ, Corinth. You’ve got to believe me. These aren’t your normal East End gangsters. I’ve dealt with them before. These are . . . animals. I went through the war, Corinth, and I tell you I was never once as scared in the trenches as I am now.’

  ‘See here,’ said Edward, suddenly decisive, ‘I’ll ring Inspector Pride now and say we are going round to the Yard. Can you get that fat boy of yours at the door to get us a cab while I make the call?’

  ‘Yes, and thanks, old man, I mean it: thanks a lot.’

  Edward rang Pride, who was not at the Yard but at home in bed. Edward had a job getting the sergeant on duty to wake him up and he had to come over very aristocratic to make the man brave Inspector Pride’s justifiable wrath at being bothered so late at night – it was after eleven. He heard the sergeant on the other line obviously being abused by the Inspector before Pride was made to understand that Lord Edward Corinth wanted to convey into his hands the elusive Captain Gordon. The sergeant, when he had put down the telephone, came back to Edward to tell him that Inspector Pride would meet him at Scotland Yard in forty-five minutes – the time it would take him to dress and drive over from leafy Wimbled
on where he lived in suburban comfort. When Edward had put down the telephone receiver he went to look for Gordon, who had gone upstairs to see about the taxi, and bumped into Amy.

  ‘I saw you leave the table and I guessed something had happened,’ she said breathlessly.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured her. ‘Captain Gordon is here and he wants me to go with him to Scotland Yard. By the way, he says there are some very nasty people in this dope business and even though you are not involved, someone may have seen you with me. So please, I want you to be very careful. In fact it might be better if you came with me to Scotland Yard, and then we can decide if it is safe for you to be at home by yourself. If we are to believe the good Captain there are some violent Chinese gentlemen creating mayhem around here and I don’t want to get you mixed up in it.’

  Edward’s big fear was that she already was mixed up in it by association with the Cocoanut Grove but he didn’t want to frighten her. By this time they had reached the door of the club. It was a warm night and the sky was very clear. It was getting on for midnight – the city was silent except for the occasional squawk of a taxi in Regent Street. The noise of the traffic had eased. There was no sign of Caspar, the club ‘bouncer’, but Gordon was waving down a taxi. The cab, which had begun to slow, suddenly picked up speed. Gordon stood in the middle of the street like a rabbit hypnotized by the cab’s headlights. Edward, with a cry of alarm, sprinted toward him, a black, stationary figure outlined in the yellow glow of the headlamps. He launched himself at the man and the two of them rolled into the gutter. The cab swept past them, its mudguard grazing Edward’s shins. Captain Gordon’s story had been substantiated in the most convincing way. At least this time, Edward thought as he hugged the man to him like a mother with her baby, I have been able to prevent a death.

  As he gathered his wits he heard a very shaken Amy Pageant saying, ‘For God’s sake, Edward. Are you all right?’ Then she was there helping him to his feet. Before turning to see to Gordon, who still lay where he had fallen, he gathered her into his arms and kissed her, her scent filling him with a determination never to release her.