by Caron Allan
‘Well it could be,’ Miss Parsons said, though she sounded doubtful. ‘I suppose a really avid collector might pay whatever it takes to get hold of one. Otherwise, it probably depends what the decoration was made of.’
Dottie didn’t understand. ‘I thought you said it would be flax or silk, possibly covered with gold or silver? That doesn’t sound terribly valuable.’
Miss Parsons nodded, saying, ‘But they would often use real gems, pearls, rubies, emeralds, to create shapes. A pearl might be the eye of a saint, for example, or a teardrop, or just part of a pattern. Or dozens of tiny ones, possibly even hundreds, could be used to create hair or a garment or a flower. These would all be held in place by the stitches I showed you. I suppose there might have been a market for the gold and silver thread too. The individual components of the decoration could be very valuable. Churches in those days were ransacked for silverware, candlesticks, statues, paintings, carvings, and even for these little bits and pieces. Vestments were often cut to shreds in the ransacking. And little gems were easy to carry, easy to hide, easy to sell. Even today, that could still be true... That’s all I can think of.’
Dottie said goodbye in something of a daze, promising to keep in touch, and if she found out more about the scrap or its major piece, to let Miss Parsons know.
At the gate, she was directed to the wages clerk and drew her pay, a rather astonishingly large sum of money which she hoped would go some way towards mitigating her mother’s annoyance. She tucked the large banknotes into her bag, and made her way out to the gate. She gave Anthony the messenger-boy a shilling, which thrilled him, and a kiss on the cheek which thrilled him even more and made him blush bright pink.
Stepping out into the bustling street and back into the real world, still with a strange sense of moving in a dream, Dottie began to make her way home, mulling over what Miss Parsons had told her.
Chapter Eight
DOTTIE ARRIVED HOME with a profound sense of an unpleasant task behind her. Next time, she said to herself for the dozenth time, Mrs Carmichael asks me to do her a favour, I shall politely but firmly decline.
Janet, opening the door at once, had clearly been on the lookout for her. She took Dottie’s scarf and coat, and the signed photograph of Miss Hutchings Dottie had obtained. The photograph she put into her uniform pocket immediately; she would have to wait until she got back to the kitchen to gloat over that with Cook and Margie. The scarf she hung up, and the coat she gave a good shake then hung that up too on the hall stand.
‘Tea will be in about another half an hour, Miss. Would you like a cup of tea or anything before then?’
‘No thank you, I won’t. I must just go and say hello to my parents. Come up to my room later, you can tell me everything.’
‘I was rather hoping you’d tell me all about the film studio and whatnot,’ Janet said.
Dottie smiled. ‘I promise you it’s far less exciting than you’d think.’
‘I bet that Miss Hutchings is quite something,’ Janet added, and didn’t understand Dottie’s sudden giggle.
‘She certainly is. Any messages for me?’
‘Yes, several...’
But Dottie cut her off before she could embark on a recitation. ‘Any urgent messages?’
‘Well, not to say urgent, Miss...’
‘Good, they can all wait. I’ll say a quick hello to Mother and then go and have a bath, I’m absolutely frozen. I suppose the old dragon is in its lair?’
Janet pretended not to know what she meant. ‘Mr and Mrs Manderson are in the drawing room, Miss.’ She spoiled the dignified moment with a giggle as she ran down the hall to the kitchen, already pulling out the photo.
In the drawing room, her father leapt up to hug her, more from relief at the arrival of reinforcements than from the pleasure of seeing his younger daughter. Her mother afforded her a cool nod from behind her book. Dottie noted the book was entitled ‘Moral Perils of the Modern Age’. She felt an inward groan, but nevertheless managed a bright smile as she seated herself next to her mother and remarked, ‘Well, thank goodness that’s over with.’
The book was closed and placed on the lap. ‘Really?’ her mother queried, her neatly pencilled cupid’s bows rising almost to her hairline.
‘Oh yes, they shan’t need me anymore. I’ve done my bit and I shall go to the bank tomorrow to deposit my wages.’ She fished in her bag for the money, waving the notes aloft with a certain air of triumph. Her mother tried to conceal her surprise.
‘So that’s that?’
‘Yes, Mother, I thought you’d be pleased to know it’s all over and done with.’
‘I don’t have any particular feelings about it either way,’ her mother replied.
‘What did you have to do?’ her father asked. Dottie shot him a furious look which he failed to notice. Seeing the promise of awakening wrath in her mother’s eyes, Dottie decided to skirt the truth somewhat.
‘Oh you know. Just spent about four hours standing by a mirror pretending to brush my hair, whilst Marguerite Hutchings attempted to enter the scene and sob on my shoulder without knocking everything to kingdom come. She’s a horribly clumsy woman.’
‘Got the looks, though,’ her father pointed out.
‘Really Herbert!’ Unable to snap at Dottie’s blameless account, Lavinia Manderson turned her temper on her husband.
‘Sorry, m’dear,’ Herbert retreated once more behind his newspaper, but spared a second to direct a wry grin at his daughter.
‘I spent such a lot of time with the wardrobe mistress, a Miss Parsons. She was a tremendous fount of knowledge on fabrics and costumes. She’d get on famously with Mrs Carmichael, I’m quite certain.’ The whole time she was speaking, Dottie was wishing the tea would be brought in. In the end she found she just couldn’t keep sitting there. She jumped up. ‘Just got time for a quick bath before tea, I feel horribly dusty from the warehouse. Won’t be a tick.’
She hurried out. Her mother, looking after her, said, ‘Horrid vulgar expression.’ And returned to her book. Peace descended once more on the drawing room at the Mandersons’.
There were two large bowls of hot-house flowers in Dottie’s room. Both sported cards, handwritten in small neat print, and signed with a flourish ‘James’. The first card said simply, ‘Do let me have the pleasure of your company for dinner tomorrow evening.’ The second, imbued in Dottie’s imagination with a certain petulance, said, ‘I was so sorry to find you out last evening when I called to take you to dinner. Your mother informed me that you were otherwise engaged. Perhaps next time you would let me know if you are not available.’
‘He’s called about a dozen times, too, Miss,’ Janet told her, and fished a sheaf of notes from her apron pocket. ‘He’s being a bit of a bother, to be honest with you. And not the most polite of gentlemen.’
‘No indeed,’ said Dottie with feeling. ‘Please could you get rid of the flowers, Janet, their heavy scent is giving me a headache. Just put them outside in the rubbish bin.’
‘Not very nice, are they, all show and a smell you’d sooner forget. Reminds me of a funeral home. When we went to see my Auntie Mamie in her coffin last September, the place stank like this.’ She hefted a flower-bowl in each arm, and somehow managed to give the sheaf of messages to Dottie on her way out of the room. She called over her shoulder, ‘I’ll just get rid of this lot then I’ll air your room out for you, Miss, whiles you’re down having your tea. It’s because of the smell Mrs Manderson didn’t want the flowers downstairs.’
While Dottie waited for her bath to fill, she reflected that only a few years earlier, when she was a little girl, two maids used to run up and down the back stairs with buckets of hot water to fill the tub. Now the water was piped in, and saved Janet a lot of hard work. Not to mention saving heaps of time, too.
Dottie undressed, and sat on her bed in her dressing gown until the bath was ready. She began to leaf through the messages. Janet had been right, there were in fact thirteen messages from Doct
or James Melville, ranging from the first, ‘Thank you for your delightful company last night, I do hope I may see you again,’ to the final one, dated just the evening before, and saying, ‘Since I have not been able to speak with you and have not heard from you, I can only assume I have somehow caused offence. Do allow me the opportunity of begging your forgiveness, and please join me for afternoon tea at the new tea room opposite the Museum, tomorrow at half past four.’
Well she’d missed that, it was already almost five o’clock. No doubt a very annoyed young man would telephone shortly and demand an explanation. He really was being surprisingly persistent for someone who appeared to take no pleasure whatsoever in her company.
There was also a short message from Inspector Hardy, saying simply, ‘Thank you for your kind wishes.’ Clearly, ‘wishes’ here was a euphemism for a good hard slap across the face. She couldn’t help but smile, though she cringed with embarrassment at the thought of her behaviour. She hoped he was all right.
The final message came from Mrs Carmichael, just a short note to say Dottie was needed at the warehouse for a fitting, and could she be there either at nine o’clock or ten o’clock the following morning. ‘Tell her either’s fine’ was scrawled across the bottom of the sheet, almost disappearing into obscurity in the corner, and perfectly encapsulated both Mrs Carmichael’s manner of delivering a message and Janet’s method of taking them.
Dottie had her bath in record time and joined her parents once again, to find both mother and father in good moods.
One of the first things Hardy did upon his return to work was to re-interview the man held in the cells for the robberies.
Maple accompanied him, and they sat in the gloomy little room side by side and faced the miserable specimen who was supposedly their intrepid armed robber. The man, five feet two inches tall, hollow of cheek and chest, with a rasping cough as a memento of the first world war, could not have looked less like the popular image of an armed and ruthless gunman.
‘Meet Wilfred Walter Wotherspoon, outwardly an antiques dealer, but really just a receiver and fence of this parish,’ Maple said to Hardy. Hardy, folding his arms and sitting back in his seat, surveyed Mr Wotherspoon in a lazy manner. After a few seconds he remarked,
‘That sounds like one of those rhymes children say in the playground. You know, Frank, where you have to say it as fast as you can without making a mistake.’
Frank Maple laughed, his immense shoulders shaking as he did so, and Hardy could feel his own chair shaking as a result. ‘What, wilfredwalterwotherspoon-wilfredwalterwotherspoon-wilfredwalterwotherspoon-wilfred...’
‘All right!’ said the man sitting opposite them. ‘I’ll not stay here and be insulted about me name. You’ve got nowt on me, and yer’ll have to let me go. I bin here three days already. I’ve got me business to attend to. I wasn’t there, I didn’t do it, I didn’t see nowt. You ain’t got nowt.’
‘I love the English language,’ Hardy said to Maple. ‘We all have our own little ways of communicating, don’t we? Every corner of our great nation has its own special sayings and idioms.’
‘I like ‘nowt’, meself,’ Maple said, ‘Londoners don’t say nowt as often as they should. I wish it would catch on more. It’s much nicer than that old-fashioned ‘nuffink’.’
‘The trouble is,’ Hardy continued, ‘when you don’t hear your own special brand of English spoken for a while, you start to lose your native tongue and adopt the new one.’
‘Like you, sir, if you don’t mind me saying,’ Maple said with a sideways glance at Hardy. He folded his arms too, and leaned back, both of them now staring at Wilfred Walter Wotherspoon as if he were one of the duller forms of pondlife. ‘I mean, there you were just sent down from the actual Oxford University—brawling wasn’t it, sir, if you don’t mind me mentioning it, what got you sent down—and talking the King’s own English, and now, just a few years later, why, you could pass for an ordinary bloke in any part of London.’
‘That’s why they wanted me for that undercover job last year,’ Hardy said, ‘they knew I wouldn’t mind killing a chap if I had to, and anyway the higher-ups would always sweep something like that under the carpet. It’s worth it just to close a big case. I had an in with all the gangs out East. I could get a man’s arms broken or, heaven forbid, legs too, in less than five minutes. I must admit, I miss that job. Sometimes sitting behind a desk is a trifle unexciting.’
‘Do you still have that stiletto they gave you?’ Maple asked. ‘Never actually seen one. I’d quite like a quick look, if you do.’
Wilfred Walter Wotherspoon looked distinctly unwell. He fidgeted in his seat. Maple thought, though couldn’t be sure, that he heard the little man whimper.
‘Oh, it’s not a stiletto, sergeant, it’s an old-fashioned open razor. You know, the cut-throat sort. Nasty thing, you could have quite an accident with that.’ Slowly Hardy began to unbutton his jacket.
‘All right, all right!’ Mr Wotherspoon shouted, ‘I’ll tell you anything you want to know, just don’t—don’t cut me, please.’
Hardy leaned forward. ‘Talk,’ he said.
Flora’s pregnancy was proceeding well. After her appointment with her doctor, she met her sister at their usual table at the Lyons’ corner house. Once they were settled and surrounded by sandwiches, buns and pots of tea, Dottie told Flora what she had learned about the fabric scrap from Judith Parsons.
‘Forgive me for saying so, Dottie, but if this Miss Parsons, a mere wardrobe mistress, knows what it is, then I find it hard to believe your favourite curator of all things costume would not also have known.’ She took a huge bite of her roast chicken sandwich. ‘I’m starving!’ she said, somewhat muffled by the food in her mouth. She patted her quite plump stomach. ‘It’s true what they say about eating for two, I’m ravenous all the time!’
‘You must be having quintuplets, you’re definitely eating for a lot more than two. But yes, I’ve been thinking about that. Melville had to have known. I suspected as much before but now I’m quite certain. But the question is, why did he lie?’
‘Perhaps he was just being super cautious in an academic sort of way. You know these intellectuals always hem and haw and don’t like to commit themselves. It makes them seem more important than they really are.’
‘Do you really believe that was it?’
‘Well, no, not if I’m being honest. He knew. It wasn’t a case of he thought he knew but just needed to check a few facts, or anything like that. He was certain.’
‘Exactly. He knew. He lied to me. Deliberately. I just know he lied. But why? That’s what I can’t understand.’
They ate in silence for a minute or two, then Dottie continued, ‘Remember how he asked me if we had more of it? Do you think he was wondering if we’d found and hacked a tiny piece off an actual vestment?’
‘Do you mean, did he want to get his hands on the whole thing? Is it possible it is valuable, like your Miss Parsons said it could be?’
Memory succeeded memory and a horrible thought came to Dottie. She looked at Flora with wide, distressed eyes.
‘When he took me out for dinner, we went to the restaurant in a cab. It was uphill work trying to get any conversation at all out of him, I can tell you. But one of the few things he did ask was whether I had the scrap with me, as he said he’d like another look at it. He apologised very charmingly and plausibly once again for trying to cut it into pieces. Oh, it was all done so cleverly, but I now I have this overriding impression that it was, so to speak, the main business of the evening. He didn’t really want to be out with me at all.’
She held her cup to her lips but didn’t drink, instead staring into space as she ran over everything he had said and done that blighted evening.
‘Flora, I think he just wants to get his hands on the big piece of fabric we said the scrap was taken from. He must know its true value.’
‘Or perhaps he thinks it will help him make a name for himself if he ‘discovers’ it? Have you told
our favourite policeman what we’ve found out about the scrap?’
Dottie shook her head and concentrated on her tea, but grimacing at the overly sweet taste, she set the cup aside, and opted instead for a sticky currant bun with swirls of icing on the top.
‘Perhaps you could at least mention your suspicions to William,’ Flora suggested. ‘It would set your mind at rest, and then if he thought there was anything to it, at least you’d have done your civic duty. What? Now what’s wrong?’ There was a new expression on her sister’s face. She was a picture of utter misery.
‘Oh, I haven’t told you. It’s quite a big thing, actually. Remember when we saw each other the other day and you said it had been Mrs Hardy’s funeral that morning?’
‘Yes, and you’d not even heard she’d passed away. I do hope he’s all right. What? What is it?’
Dottie continued to rip her sticky bun into tiny pieces on her plate, her head bowed. Flora couldn’t see Dottie’s face, but could tell from the trembling fingers and the growing heap of bun fragments that she was really distressed. She put a hand out to still her sister’s fretful movements.
‘Dottie, what on earth is it?’
‘In the evening, I thought I’d pop round and see if there was anything I could do. I wanted to say how sorry I was. And I was, I suppose, thinking Eleanor might need a bit of support.’
‘That was such a kind thought!’
Dottie looked at Flora and seemed to wilt. There were tears in her eyes as she leaned forward and in a low voice, said, ‘Well, at first I couldn’t make anyone hear me, then I tried the door. It opened very spookily, just like when I found poor Susan Dunne a month or so ago. It gave me chills. I had to really stop myself from running away right then and there. So I went inside. I went all round the house but couldn’t find anyone at home. I felt awfully guilty about being in the house uninvited but I just had to make sure, in case someone was ill or they’d forgotten to lock up and might get burgled, or, well, I don’t know, just anything.’