by Lear, James
Belinda smiled fondly. “I think Harry’s met his intellectual match at last, don’t you, Mitch?”
“Certainly looks that way.”
The cook, who looked exactly like the many aunts I’d left behind in Boston, appeared in the door, arms folded.
“Ah, cook,” said Belinda. “Mr. Mitchell is up, and we are ready for breakfast.”
“So I see.”
“Complete works, Mitch? Egg, bacon, sausage, fried bread, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, eh?”
“Oh, I, well…” I was hungry enough to eat whatever cook could give me, but the look on her face was making me nervous.
“Don’t worry about cook. Her bark’s worse than her bite. Eh, Mrs. Sleightholme?”
“I don’t know why I put up with your sense of humor, sir, I really don’t,” said the formidable Mrs. Sleightholme, but I could see that she was melted by Morgan’s cheerful manner—as was everyone. “I suppose I’ll manage to rustle up something, even at this late hour.” It was barely half past eight, but she was making me feel as if I’d slept till noon.
“Good show. Two full fry-ups then. Belinda will nibble on a piece of dry toast, as usual.”
“Some of us are trying to regain our figure after you-know-what,” said Belinda. “It’s all right for you.” She prodded Morgan in the stomach. “You get plenty of exercise. All I do is change nappies.”
Morgan grabbed her hand, brought it to his face, and kissed it. The baby, sandwiched between its parents, chuckled in delight. Husband and wife were obviously very much in love. Any evil thoughts I may have harbored—how Morgan would break down and confess that it had all been a horrible mistake, that he wanted me after all—were crushed. I remembered the telegram from Vince and felt like even more of a heel.
Breakfast came and went, the baby was charming, and Belinda was every bit as nice as I remembered. The perfect match for my best friend. A wonderful mother and a beautiful woman. C’est la vie.
Dishes cleared and baby taken out for its walk, I told Morgan all about the adventure of the Flying Scotsman, of Rhys’s death, and the suspicious cast of characters that had dispersed at Kings Cross Station. I left out a few irrelevant details—but there was enough fucking and sucking in the narrative to keep him interested.
“I knew there would be some kind of excitement when you arrived! And here we have it—a ready-made murder mystery. Gosh, won’t that be fun!”
“Boy, you talk about it as if it’s a game. A man died.”
“I know, old chap. But come on, admit it. It’s thrilling.”
“Yes,” I said, trying not to sound too gung-ho—but Boy’s enthusiasm was hard to resist. “And what would you suggest we do about it?”
“Pay a few calls. Ask a few questions. Track people down. Come on, Mitch, this stinks to high heavens. You know you’re not going to go back to Edinburgh without getting to the bottom of it.” He paused for a moment, thoughtful, then added “and you’re not going back to Edinburgh without getting to the bottom of me, either. My poor arse hasn’t been fucked for so long I’ve practically forgotten what it feels like.”
“Come on. All those guys at the rowing club…”
“You must be joking. They’d tar and feather a fellow sooner than admit they like a bit of bum fun.”
“I’ll come to that in good time,” I said, letting my hand brush over one tight buttock.
“Come up it, you mean.”
“But you’re going to have to earn it.”
“I see. The old Holmes and Watson act, is it?”
“Something like that. So where do we start?”
“That’s easy, guv. Your new friend Hugo Taylor opens in a play tonight.”
“You’re right. With Tallulah Bankhead.”
“Oh, God. Ghastly woman,” said Morgan, “but the wife likes her. Want to go?”
“Yes, but how on earth can we get tickets to a Hugo Taylor first night?”
“Come on, Mitch, you’re the friend of the stars. Pull strings.”
I telephoned the Regal Hotel, and was told that the gentlemen in Room 23 had not yet got up—that didn’t surprise me—and I left a message, arranging to meet at the Garrick Theatre.
There was no sign of Bertrand and Simmonds when we turned up at the Garrick—already, at midday, the scene of a minor riot. Fans of both sexes were milling around the front of the building, hoping to catch a glimpse of the stars. Office girls mixed with slim young men in belted raincoats and soft felt hats; both Taylor and Bankhead attracted the ardent admiration of what the newspapers referred to as “the lavender league.” The opening of La Dame aux Camélias, with Tallulah as Marguerite Gautier, Hugo as her lover Armand, was a gala day in the West End. The “Tonight at 8.00” signs were pasted over with SOLD OUT notices.
It was time, as Morgan said, to pull strings.
We elbowed our way through the crowd—and I felt a few hands “accidentally” touching me fore and aft along the way. Finally we made it to the door, where a splendid uniformed attendant was keeping the crowd at bay.
“I have an appointment with Mr. Hugo Taylor.”
This kind of lie might well have earned me a kick in the pants, but I was in luck. Perhaps the attendant had been told that Mr. Taylor was in the habit of receiving strange young men at the theater; perhaps he simply liked the sound of my American accent. In any case, he let us in.
And there, standing in the lobby surrounded by a throng of pressmen, was Francis Laking. He saw me, wiggled his fingers, and eventually tore himself away.
“Please, gentlemen, that’s enough! Honestly! They would rip you to shreds, those reporters. Mitch, darling.” He kissed me on the cheek; Morgan looked uncomfortable. “And who is your new friend? I say, you don’t waste any time, do you? Only in London a few hours.”
“Harry Morgan. Sir Francis Laking, baronet.”
They shook hands.
“And if I might say so, Frankie, you don’t waste much time either. I thought you were attached to Miss Athenasy.
“So I was. But really, I’ve had enough of her. And besides, with her being taken into custody, there’s not much to do.”
“What?”
“Didn’t you hear? My dear, I don’t suppose you did. They will have hushed it up. She was picked up at Kings Cross, you know, and probably not for the first time. Bags full of swag, apparently.”
“What? Drugs?” Dickinson had told me about suitcases full of heroin—but Dickinson could be lying.
“No, jewelry.”
“Good God. So the diamond ring…”
“No comment.” He put his finger to his lips. “We can’t talk here. Come through to the green room.”
Inside, Frankie threw himself down on a battered leather couch—scene, I imagined, of many an amorous backstage encounter. The green room was a shabby sort of place, considering the kind of people who used it—but then, theaters always seemed like shabby places to me.
“Oh, I thought they were going to tear me limb from limb, Mitch! A poor defenseless creature like me. Where were you when I—”—he batted his lashes, pouted his lips like Daisy Athenasy—“when I needed you?”
“Come on, Frankie. Spill the beans.”
“Well, my dear, the fact is that they found the ring in her luggage.”
“The ring? Rhys’s ring?”
“The very same. Hacked off his hand.”
“Not still…on his finger?”
“Oh, God, no. Please. How disgusting. No—of the finger there is no trace. I believe they are searching the track.”
“But how on earth did the ring end up in Daisy’s luggage?”
“That’s what she’s wondering.”
“So you don’t believe that she had anything to do with it?”
“Daisy? Come off it. She’s not bright enough to be a criminal mastermind. Someone’s set her up.”
“Dickinson.”
“It does ever so slightly point at him,” sighed Frankie. “Oh, and when I think of all the times I tried to
make myself available to him… Well, one lives and learns. Or in my case, doesn’t learn.”
“So who are you working for now, Frankie?”
“Officially, Hugo Taylor. He likes having me around. ‘You seem to know the most fascinating people, Francis.’ ” His impression of Taylor was perfect. “He thinks I’m going to be a sort of upper-class procuress, my dear, ushering lines of handsome young men and rich old widows into his dressing room. He really is disgustingly self-interested.”
“And unofficially?”
Frankie’s hand fluttered around his collar. “Miss Bankhead. Tallulah.”
“Of course.”
“Isn’t she divine?”
“If you say so.”
“Oh, but she’s camp! Why, last night, we stayed up till four dancing the Black Bottom and drinking whiskey sours.”
“You look very well on it, I must say.”
“Well, I took the precaution of helping myself to a little bit of Daisy’s stash. She’ll thank me for it, now she’s in police custody. As a result, I feel marvelous.”
Morgan sat throughout this with a face like thunder; he did not like men of Frankie’s stamp, and was not much good at hiding it.
“But I can see that I’m upsetting your charming friend,” said Frankie. “I presume you came here for a reason, Mitch, and it wasn’t to ask me to dinner.”
“I’ll be honest with you: we were hoping to get some tickets for tonight’s show.”
“I see.” Frankie sighed. “They never want me for myself… Very well. How many do you want? A pair? Two pairs? A box?”
“Are you kidding?”
“I’ll get you a box if you want one. I can put ghastly old Lady Crawley in with the Prime Minister. She’ll sleep through the whole thing anyway, and he’ll be thrilled to bits at sharing with someone so dreadfully rich. Silly man.”
“Well, if you’re sure…”
“That’s awfully decent,” said Morgan, making a big effort to be polite.
“If I can’t help a sister… Oops, sorry, there I go again. And I suppose you can come to the party afterward, at the Royal?”
“You bet.”
“Oh good. It’ll be ghastly, of course, but they’ll all be there. You know. Everyone.” He winked.
“Who?”
“Oh, come on. Don’t pretend you haven’t heard! A certain personage?”
“Frankie, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Well, then, wait and see. Oh, my, what a night. Now stop trying to seduce me, and let me get on with my job. Really! It’s a burden being so irresistible to men…”
We left the theater with a spring in our step, and, more to the point, five tickets for the opening night in my pocket. Bertrand and Simmonds were outside, keeping clear of the crowd. They looked entirely wrapped up in each other.
When the necessary introductions had been made, I asked Bertrand what, if anything, he had managed to find out about the case. It was quite clear to me that he had spent most of the last 12 hours with his legs wrapped around Simmonds’s back.
“So—what’s new?” I asked him.
“Thomas has told me something.”
“Thomas?”
“Me, sir,” said Simmonds. “Thomas.”
We shook hands again. Out of his uniform, Simmonds looked a great deal more presentable.
“Come on, then. Out with it.”
Bertrand and Thomas glanced at each other and smiled shyly at some private joke, and then Thomas began.
“Well, it started last week. The police were sniffing around Waverley Station, which isn’t unusual, because we get a lot of funny characters passing through on the way to and from London. But this time they were in the office asking a lot of nosy questions about the running of the trains, the staff, the passengers. Eventually Superintendent Dickinson was brought in, and he told us that he was working undercover to bust a drug smuggling ring. He told us that we’d be carrying Hugo Taylor and Daisy Athenasy down to London, private compartments and all that, and that we were to follow his orders for the duration of the journey.”
“And what were those orders?”
“Ah,” said Bertrand, “now you hear it.”
“He said that there would be a dangerous gang of criminals traveling on the same train, and that if we found anyone acting suspiciously we were to use all necessary force to apprehend them.”
“On Dickinson’s authority?”
“Yes.”
“And nobody thought this was unusual?”
“No. It was done with the full cooperation of the station management.”
“So that’s why you were so hard on poor little Bertrand here.”
“Yes. I will never forgive myself for what I did.”
“Looks like you’ve made friends now, though,” said Morgan, who was always good at lightening the mood. He’d been looking at Bertrand with a little more interest than I altogether liked.
“Isn’t it time that you got off to work, old chap?” I prodded.
“Yes, I suppose I should put in an appearance. I’ll see you tonight.” He shook hands all around and jumped onto a passing bus.
“And I must be off as well,” said Thomas. “I’d better go and say hello to my relatives, tell them I won’t be seeing too much of them on this trip.” He squeezed Bertrand’s shoulder. “Or on any trips in the foreseeable future.”
When we were alone, I took Bertrand to a café in Soho for some lunch.
“All right. I want to hear all about it,” I said expectantly.
“He is married. What can I say? There is no future.”
“That’s a thoroughly defeatist attitude, Bertrand, if I may say so.”
“What can we do? He has a wife and children, he has a job that he cannot afford to leave.”
“But do you like him?”
“Ah, for that.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I like him well. Perhaps I even love him. But what does it matter?”
I wanted to shake him out of this ridiculous Continental gloom. “So tell me, is he a good lover?”
“Oh, yes.”
“What did you do?”
“Tout.”
“He fucked you?”
“Yes. He fuck me.” He shifted in his seat rather uncomfortably, which was hardly surprising considering the abuse that his ass had taken. “He is very big, Mitch.”
“Bigger than me?”
“Maybe. I would have to see you both at the same time to be sure.”
“That can be arranged.” I was getting stiff again, and I rearranged my napkin so as not to terrify the waiters. “So, you fucked all night, then?”
“Some of the night. For many hours, we talked. And then for maybe two hours we slept.”
“And then you woke up this morning…”
“Yes. We fucked again.”
“Mon pauvre petit. You must be sore.”
“It is a pain that I can endure.”
“I bet you can, you horny little—”
The waiter brought our lunch, and we were obliged to change the subject.
“So today, my friend, we must give you some time to recover before, no doubt, you spend another night with your legs in the air in the Regal Hotel.”
“Not always. He likes me to sit on it and slide down—”
“And we must pay some visits. Let us try, Bertrand, to keep our minds off sex, at least for the next few hours.”
Our first port of call was the Rookery Club in Russell Square. We rang the bell several times before we finally heard footsteps.
A little hatch slid back in the doorway.
“Who is it?”
“My name is Mitchell.”
“Don’t know you.” The hatch slid back. I hammered the door.
“Wait! I have information for you!”
The hatch opened again. “Are you the police?”
“Of course not. Are you going to let me in?”
“What’s the password?”
The password? This was ri
diculous, like something out of the corny crime stories my kid brother read back in Boston.
“I don’t know. But I have this.” I unfolded the scrap of letterhead that Andrews had dropped and pushed it through the hatch. It had the desired effect; bolts were drawn, chains rattled, and the door opened.
“Come in quick, then,” said an old gentleman in carpet slippers and a long, shapeless knitted garment. “We don’t want the whole world and his wife seeing you.”
We followed him up two flights of stairs. The carpet was worn, the runners loose, and the banisters wobbled as we gripped them. It looked as if the house had not been decorated, or even cleaned, since the 19th century. The old man himself looked Dickensian, or Thackeravian, or whatever the correct adjective might be. The ghost of queerness past…
“In ’ere…”
He pushed open a heavy, dark wooden door, the brass doorknob so corroded that it looked like an archaeological find.
And there, on the other side of the door, was a kind of Wonderland.
Crimson sofas in various stages of disrepair were arranged in a rough circle, covered in a crazy assortment of furs, rugs, and throws which spilled down onto the floor. The parquet was worn, uneven, and black, the crystals on the chandelier were thick with dust, and the heavy black velvet drapes so worn and frayed that if they were ever opened, they would surely disintegrate.
“Welcome to the Rookery,” the old gentleman said. “To whom do I owe the pleasure of your acquaintance?” His cracked old voice veered crazily between a sort of theatrical diction and its (presumably) native Cockney.
“William Andrews sent us.”
His mouth went into a tight little circle, and he paced up and down for a while, his slippers slapping against his stockinged heels. “And what did Mr. Andrews suggest you might find here?”
The true answer was “nothing”; I wasn’t even certain whether Andrews had dropped the paper on purpose. “I was hoping you might be able to answer a few questions.”
“Oh, yes. I ’ope you’re not the long arm of the law.”
“On the contrary. In fact, I hope to rescue Mr. Andrews from its clutches.”
“Hmmmm…”
“You don’t seem surprised to learn that he’s in trouble.”