‘I was pregnant and chucked out at home and where the hell else could I go? She gave me a job and somewhere to live and when I went away and the baby was born she was – she came to see me and let me cry after he’d been taken away and then she took me back. And I stayed on with her. What else could I do? And you – sitting there on her lap, all over her, and she was – I suppose I hated you for that. I couldn’t hate her because she’d been kind, but I hated you because she’d kept you. Mine had to be taken away, but she’d kept you.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Maggy said, and made herself lift her head to look at her.
‘Sorry? Because she was stronger than me? Because she, the marshmallow one, was strong enough to keep you, and me, the tough one, was too weak to keep mine? It’s something to be sorry for, that is.’
‘Yes,’ Maggy said, and didn’t know what else to say.
‘So there you are,’ Ida said after a moment. Her voice was normal now, its usual quiet hard self, and Maggy looked at her, trying to see the emotion that had filled her for a few seconds but seeing nothing. Just that firm, powdered, lightly rouged and understated face. ‘Does it help you any?’
‘Yes, I think it does. It’s made me – I think I ought to apologize to you too. I came to say thank you, but maybe I should apologize too.’
‘I wouldn’t bother,’ Ida said. ‘I’m coping well enough. I’m not one for digging around feelings the way you are. The way she was. I’ve told you a bit tonight because you nagged. Now can we forget it? Get on with the here and now?’
‘Yes – the here and now –’ Maggy took a deep breath, and then, baldly, plunged in. ‘I think I might have found the source of the money Dolly said was available to pay off the hotel’s debts.’
‘Have you, now?’ Ida said softly, and looked at her, sitting upright in her chair with her hands folded neatly over the open ledger in front of her. ‘Have you?’
‘Hornby. Do you remember Hornby?’
‘Yes. I remember him.’ Ida smiled again, the same twisted little smile, but there was nothing vulnerable about it now. It was hard and knowing. ‘A stupid swaggering man. All shout and mouth and – threw his money around, talked big. And then went and got himself knifed in a prison riot. Stupid creature.’
‘He stole a lot of money. Five hundred thousand.’
‘I dare say. I never counted it.’
‘I think Dolly did,’ Maggy said softly. ‘I think Dolly knew all about the money. I think she had it.’
Ida frowned. ‘Dolly had it?’
‘I think she looked after it for him, when he went to prison. A minder, that’s what she was. For a consideration, she took care of his money –’
Ida shook her head, firmly. ‘Impossible. The police were all over Creffield Road after they got him and Codling. Turned the place upside down.’ She laughed then. ‘The only thing she cared about was that they shouldn’t come when you were there. Begged ’em to do their searching in school hours. And because she was Dolly they did. They bloody well did. And much good it did them because they didn’t find a thing. She knew they wouldn’t, she was so offhand and laughing about it, so it couldn’t have been there.’
‘But she knew where it was. I’m certain of that. She hid it somewhere and then – she wanted me to have it and she couldn’t leave it properly, in a bank or wherever, because the police would have been down on it, wouldn’t they? So she hid it somewhere. That’s why she left that message in the safe deposit.’
‘Message?’
‘There was a photograph. Herself and Morty Lang and Andy Kentish –’
Ida was silent, staring at her, searching back through her memory and then she nodded. ‘I remember. A nasty character. Slippery as they came. Always sneaking about and watching and prying – but as smooth as silk. Could charm the birds off the trees.’
‘He’s hateful!’ Maggy said violently and Ida lifted her brows.
‘I saw him – in New York. He’s – he’s very bad. He’s trying to – I think he’s trying to get the money Dolly left. Hornby’s money.’
Ida shook her head, her eyes watchful now. ‘I don’t understand all this. You’re not making sense.’
Maggy sighed, tired now. ‘I only just understand it myself. Look, Dolly had this money that Hornby had given her to look after. He died in prison, his mother died, Codling died. So there was no one else who knew about it, and Dolly decided to keep it. For me –’ She grimaced then. ‘A hell of a legacy. But she – well, she was Dolly, and that was what she left. But she had to keep it hidden because of where it came from, which is why all that business about leaving a message on a photograph. But when I went to Morty he didn’t know. I don’t know what it was he was supposed to tell me, what Dolly meant him to tell me, and now I never will. He’s dead – and I’ll never know. But he mentioned Hornby, which was a start, and that was how I found out. From him and someone who used to teach me, years ago. The thing now is, where the hell is the money? Is it here?’
‘Here?’ Ida shook her head. ‘You know all that’s here. In her room. Enough rubbish there, God knows, but I haven’t been through it. That’s your affair. You’ve got the key. No one else has – only you –’
‘Not Oliver?’
‘Oh, him!’ Ida said, with a withering scorn. ‘Stupid creature! Not him. He managed it once, getting a key from me, and copying it. I heard about that. But no more. Never again.’
She reached into her desk and took out the bunch of keys and put it on the ledger in front of her. ‘It never leaves me, this bunch. The only key to Dolly’s room is the one you’ve got. If there’s any money there, it’s yours. But I’ll be surprised if there is, because the world and his wife have been in and out of that room, over the years. Oliver wasn’t the only daft feller she had dancing attendance on her. There were always other people she’d been kind to, you know. That stupid empty kindness of hers. Plenty of ’em –’
‘It’s got to be somewhere,’ Maggy said, almost despairingly. ‘She’s had me dancing all over the bloody country after it, finding people, nagging people, driving myself mad with memories and – it’s got to be somewhere, this money she’s left.’
‘Well, go and look. And if you find anything apart from those men’s clothes and her own bits of rubbish, I’ll eat my hat.’
‘Those clothes –’ Maggy said sharply. ‘Do you know who they belonged to?’
‘No. She just said she was looking after them for someone –’
‘A minder!’ Maggy said triumphantly. ‘I knew it – I am right. They must be his! She looked after everything for him, clothes and money –’
‘So go and look and see if there’s anything there,’ Ida said calmly. ‘And I’ll get on with my work. I’ve too much to do to waste much more time over this. Go and look.’
So she looked. She went back up the stairs, and into that dead silent room, and switched on the lights and stood there and looked at the blank bed with its absurd lilac satin eiderdown and the tables and cabinets and chests of drawers, and tried not to think of Dolly, sitting in that bed with her feathers round her shoulders and her shock of mad orange hair and her soft silly grin –
The wardrobe doors swung open easily and she moved fast, taking everything out, hanger after hanger, concentrating on what she was doing, trying not to think of anything else. Ida breaking her heart over a baby she had to give away. Dolly being kind to dogs and kittens. Ida being the bastard, Dolly being the nice one – not to be thought of.
There was nothing there. Just suits and overcoats and hats and shoes. Clothes, smelling faintly and mustily of the human body that had once occupied them. Nothing but clothes.
She left them where she’d piled them, on the bed, and went, locking the door behind her, running down the stairs and through the now empty lobby and back to Ida.
‘Nothing,’ she said, standing in the doorway and staring at her, a little breathless. ‘Nothing there but clothes.’
Ida’s lips moved as she finished adding up the column of figures she was wor
king on and calmly she made an entry and then looked up. ‘I’m not at all surprised. I told you there wouldn’t be.’
‘But there’s got to be – it’s got to be somewhere. And I’ve got to find it for you –’
‘For me? What’s it got to do with me?’
‘I want to give you the hotel. Afterwards. When I’ve found the money. It’s for you. I don’t want it, and it belongs to you anyway. After all this time, and all you’ve done. I want you to –’
Ida shook her head, her face as expressionless as it had ever been. ‘No thanks.’
‘But –’
‘No buts. I’ll work here as long as it’s necessary. But I don’t want it if I have to get it with the sort of money you’re looking for.’ She lifted her head then, with an almost childlike pride. ‘I don’t want it that way.’
‘I’ve still got to find it,’ Maggy said, stubbornly. ‘Dolly wanted me to find it, and I’ve got to –’
‘So go and look,’ Ida said almost contemptuously. ‘But don’t involve me –’ and she bent her head to her books again.
‘But isn’t there anywhere else in the hotel? Another room she kept things in? Kept locked? Didn’t let anyone into?’
Ida didn’t lift her head, but pointed at the bunch of keys that still lay in front of her.
‘There you are. All her keys, just as she left them. I put them on my bunch. Go and help yourself. Try every lock in the place if you want to. It’s yours, so why shouldn’t you?’
Maggy leaned over the desk and picked up the keys, staring at them. A big bunch, with a leather tag, worn and unreadable, but that had once had the name of the hotel embossed on it in gold letters. She remembered that, from a long time ago. But she remembered nothing else about any of the keys on the ring. Just a collection of pieces of metal, some in dull grey, and some shining and silvery and some yellowish and heavy. Just keys.
She turned them over in her hand, sliding each one through her fingers. Yale keys, lots of them. Little flat luggage keys, several of them. Two or three heavier ring-headed keys with ‘Chubb’ engraved on them. A couple of small cashbox keys with hollow stems. A small silvery key with a number engraved on it. B 9. Another Yale key –
She stopped and fumbled, trying to get back to the engraved key, and the bunch fell from her clumsy hand on to the desk with a silvery rattle and Ida took a sharp irritated breath.
‘Ida! This one – what key is that? This one here – the one with a number on it. Look. It says B 9. That key – where did that come from?’
Ida looked at it, the bunch on the table between them, and Maggy looked too, not wanting to touch them, not wanting to pick them up.
‘I don’t know. I told you, when she died, I just put the lot of her keys in with mine. It seemed the only sensible thing to do. I gave you the one for her bedroom. I brought it to that office of yours, remember? The rest are there. That’s all I know.’
‘That one – it’s –’ Maggy said and then stopped. Was it. She hadn’t got the other one with her. She kept it in her small locked desk at the flat. But it looked the same, exactly the same, except for the number. That was different.
‘It looks,’ she said carefully, ‘like the key to a safe deposit box. Not the one I’ve already opened. Another one.’
28
Theo was sitting on the top step outside, leaning against one of the pillars, his face in shadow, and as she came out into the heavy September night he got to his feet and said anxiously, ‘Maggy?’
‘Yes,’ she said, wearily. ‘I’m here. It’s all right.’
‘There’s someone there. No, don’t get into the light. Come here.’ He put his arm round her and held her close, talking into her right ear. ‘I thought I saw them when we got here, but I wasn’t sure. Now I am. They’ve been there all the time – over an hour. Two of ’em. Look like missionaries.’
‘That’s the sort,’ she said and began to shake, feeling the fear deep inside her. ‘Oh, Christ, that’s them. What –’
‘No need to get frightened. We can get rid of them. Come back inside.’
They walked back into the hotel and Theo, one arm still protectively round her shoulders, led her to the desk.
‘We need a taxi, in a hurry. Not a black cab – a mini-cab. Phone one, will you? And can we get out the back way? There’s someone we’re trying to dodge – you know how it is, fans –’ And he raised his eyebrows comically.
Ida came out of her office and stopped as she caught sight of them.
‘I thought you’d gone.’
‘I had,’ Maggy said. ‘I mean – there’s someone – Andy –’
‘Andy?’
‘It’ll take too long to explain now,’ Theo said crisply. ‘Tell this girl to call us a mini-cab, Ida, for heaven’s sake. Maggy’s whacked and I want to get her home. Can we get out the back way?’
‘Of course,’ Ida said, as though it were the most natural question in the world, and nodded at the girl who picked up the phone obediently and Maggy looked over her shoulder at the entrance, nervous, still shaking inside and not knowing what there was to be so scared about. What could they do, after all? Rush in through the glass doors and gun her down? Hit her over the head with all these people standing around? It was nonsensical to be so frightened when she was so well protected – and Theo’s arm felt good across her back – yet she couldn’t control it.
And even after they were in the mini-cab, a battered old Peugeot with a young driver who agreed with alacrity to drive as fast as he could to Holland Park, and had slipped out of the back way and left the watchers still at the front, she shook, and Theo sat beside her holding her close and saying nothing. And slowly, she relaxed, recovered her equilibrium and when the car screeched to a stop outside the flat, leaned forward ready to get out. It was Theo who held her back, getting out first, looking round casually as he paid the driver.
‘OK. No one here, as far as I can see. Though there may be someone in the shadows on the other side –’ He led the way towards the house, and then, after a moment, called back over his shoulder to the cab driver.
‘Hey, squire – do me a favour? We’ve had some break-ins – come up with us, just in case there’s someone there who tries to jump us?’
‘Sure,’ said the driver cheerfully and got out of the car and came up the steps, and with a man on each side of her, Maggy climbed the stairs, feeling more foolish now than frightened.
‘This is mad,’ she said to Theo as he pushed her back against the cab driver before, very gingerly, putting his key in the lock of the flat door. ‘We can’t go on like this, jumping like cats at every shadow –’
‘It’s all right.’ Theo had put the light on, and moved quickly through the rooms, checking there was no one there. ‘It’s fine. Thanks, squire –’ and he gave the driver an extra pound note and the man grinned and nodded and went whistling away down the stairs.
‘He probably thinks we’re dodging a jealous husband or something,’ Maggy said, and threw her jacket on to one end of the sofa and sank on to it with a deep sigh of relief. ‘It’s the most childish cops-and-robbers stuff –’
‘Childish it may be. Real it certainly is, Maggy. We’re going to have to call the police, you know that, don’t you? We can’t go on putting up with this sort of thing. Being followed and –’
‘I’ve found what it is they’re after,’ Maggy said, and Theo, who had been pouring vodka and tonic into glasses, lifted his head sharply.
‘What did you say?’
‘I think I’ve found Dolly’s money. Hornby’s money. My money, damn it. Not that I want it. Ida says she doesn’t either –’
Theo ignored that. ‘Where? How much?’
‘It’s the maddest thing, it really is.’ She began to giggle as she took her drink from him. ‘All these weeks and all this fuss, and she had the damn thing the whole time. Did Mort know she had it? He couldn’t have. But Dolly sent me to him, and not to Ida – it just doesn’t make any sort of sense –’ and she drank aga
in, and giggled again. ‘It’s the maddest thing.’
‘You’re not making sense,’ Theo said, and sat beside her, watching her as he too drank. ‘Who had what the whole time?’
‘This.’ She put her hand in her skirt pocket and took out the key and held it out to him in the flat of her hand. ‘This.’
He stared at it.
‘It’s a key to a safe deposit box. Not the one I’ve already got – that’s over there, in the desk –’ She got up and went over to the desk and took its key from the little cleft in the side where she always hid it, and unlocked it, and fumbled around, looking for the other key.
‘You see?’ She sat down beside him again. ‘They are the same, aren’t they?’
He picked them up, turning them over and over in his fingers. ‘They look it.’
‘Different numbers. See? This one, the one I already had, is B 11. This other one is B 9. The same, only very, very different.’ Again she laughed. ‘Stupid, isn’t it?’
‘Where did you get it?’
‘Ida. It was on her bunch. She put it there with Dolly’s other keys, after she died.’
They were silent for a while and then Theo said carefully, ‘And you think that the box that key belongs to –’
‘– is in the same safe deposit that the first box was in.’
‘And that it’s got –’ He stopped, and stared at the key.
‘It’s got five hundred thousand pounds in it. Or at least, what’s left of it. He probably spent quite a lot before he went to prison. On my schooling, for a start.’
She laughed then, trying to be insouciant about it, but it hurt all the same. ‘And of course there was the other man, Codling. I suppose he had his share and that’s – well, that could be anywhere. But at the very least there’s got to be a couple of hundred thousand pounds there, hasn’t there?’
‘It’s a hell of a lot of money, Maggy. Enough to – enough for almost anything.’
‘Rainbow Records?’ she said, and knew her voice was hard, and wished it weren’t.
He lifted his head and looked at her. ‘I’m never going to be allowed to forget that, am I?’
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