by Lear, James
These gloomy musings must have shown on my face.
“Chin up, Mitch,” said Simmonds. “We’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“I hope so. But will we get there in time? I have a terrible feeling that something—”
“What?”
“Something is going to happen tonight.”
XII
WE MADE IT BACK TO THE GARRICK JUST IN TIME. THE audience was spilling out onto the pavement, hailing cabs, smoking cigarettes, trying to gain access to the stage door, through which, at some point, Taylor and Bankhead would pass. There were newspapermen everywhere. Somewhere in the melee were Morgan and Belinda, Lady Antonia and her cronies, and God knew who else.
Yes! There was a face I recognized! A handsome young man, short, shifty-looking, jumping up and down to survey the crowd, his hat pushed back on his head. And I recognized his friend too, taller, more heavily built. He had a camera hung around his neck. Where did I know them from? Somewhere recent? I racked my brain. British-American? No. Before that. Of course: the Flying Scotsman. They were the reporters I’d seen talking to David Rhys. The ones Dickinson, in his disguise as a British-American publicity director, had thrown off the train during that fortuitous stop at York.
And here they were again: two more pieces of the jigsaw, falling strangely into place.
They were not difficult to reach. Approaching, I tipped my hat to them, but they ignored me, far more interested in the comings and goings of the glittering first-night crowd.
“I believe I saw you gentlemen on the train from Edinburgh.”
I got a scowl in return.
“Still tailing Hugo Taylor, then?”
“What does it look like?” said the shorter of the two. He had very pale blue eyes, which could have been attractive in a less suspicious-looking face.
“I bet you guys would like to hear a story about Hugo Taylor, wouldn’t you?”
“Piss off, mate,” said the photographer. “We’re working.”
I suppose that pressmen are bothered constantly by members of the public desperate to get their crackpot theories into print.
“So it won’t interest you to know, then, that there was an attempt on his life this evening.”
“Bollocks. Hey! Scott! Here comes Lady Antonia! Get a picture of her!”
The cameraman did as he was told. The reporter scribbled in his notebook.
“And there’s Cecil Beaton! And Noël Coward!”
“Together?”
“No. We’ll say they’ve cut each other. Get the shot!”
“Someone put cyanide in his mouthwash.”
“Please, sir,” said Scott, the photographer. “We’ve asked you nicely to leave us in peace and get on with our job. Now will you take the hint and fuck off?”
“I just told you there was an attempt on the leading man’s life. Is that not of interest to your editor?”
“We heard he had a funny turn. Happens all the time. They’re all doping, these actors.” The reporter barely bothered to look at me, his eyes riveted on the crowd. “We can’t write about it. Orders from above.”
“Then I shall take my story elsewhere.”
“Good luck.”
Ill-mannered little prick! I wanted to knock him down. But I sensed that he knew things that might be useful to me.
“Thank you. And tomorrow, try explaining to your editor that you missed a story all about Prince George.”
That got his attention.
“What?”
“Prince George. Backstage in Hugo Taylor’s dressing room. Displaying a lively concern. Shortly after Mr. Taylor’s costar, Daisy Athenasy, was arrested in connection with the murder of a man on the Flying Scotsman.”
“You are joking.”
“I wish I were.”
“Scott, keep snapping. I’ve got a scoop.”
“But Connor, for God’s sake—”
“Do as I tell you.” Connor, the weaselly little reporter, took my arm and led me aside, while Scott kept shooting, occasionally casting angry glances in our direction.
“Go on, Mr.…er…?”
“Mitchell. Edward Mitchell.” He took down my name. “Shortly after you left the train at York, a man was killed…” I told him the whole story, and he scribbled.
When I’d finished, he said, “You really expect me to believe that that interfering bastard who chucked us off the train was an undercover cop?”
“Yes. Call your news desk. Perhaps some of the senior reporters will know the name. You’re just showbiz—”
“All right, all right. No need to get shirty. But come on, mate. Even if he is a copper, you can’t seriously think that he bumped off some bloke just because he was—what? Nobbing some other feller? You’ve got to have a better motive than that. What do you reckon? Jealous lover? Queer love triangle?”
“No, I don’t think that was the reason.”
“Then what? Come on, you’re wasting my time.”
“I think,” I said, improvising wildly, “that David Rhys found out something about Hugo Taylor and Prince George.”
I made that up on the spur of the moment, to persuade Connor that I wasn’t making a mountain out of a molehill—but suddenly it made sense. Of course! If Dickinson was in league with the British Fascists, trying to “clean up” the royal family and remove Prince George from his undesirable connections, then any inadvertent discovery of the royal person’s peccadilloes would be a very good motive for murder.
“And where does Daisy Athenasy fit into all this?”
There he had me, but I wasn’t going to admit it. There was no point in telling him about Daisy’s drug habit, as that was clearly common knowledge. Once again, I scrabbled around for a foothold in the scree of supposition.
I said, “British-American is making blue movies—”
“You don’t say?”
“—to make up the shortfall for her box-office disasters.”
“Go on.”
I felt like saying “I’m going as fast as I can—it takes time to make this crap up!”—but then I had another flash of intuition.
“And they were being blackmailed by Peter Dickinson.”
“I thought you told me he was working for them?”
“He was. But I see it all now. They’d agreed to let him pretend to be a British-American employee, on the understanding that he was trying to crack the drug ring that was supplying Daisy. Herbert Waits, her husband, would have wanted to get her off the drugs—”
“Or possibly he wanted proof that she was on them,” said Connor, who clearly had ambitions to get out of showbiz reporting and into proper investigative journalism. “That way, he could fire her on a morals clause—and get a very easy divorce. She’s been a millstone round his neck ever since she frog-marched him up the aisle.”
“And then,” I continued, “Dickinson turned on Waits, said that he’d blow the whistle on the studio’s secret activities, unless… Unless what?”
“Unless he lets him get to Hugo Taylor.”
We looked at each other. Could this possibly be true? Had Peter Dickinson really abused his position that far—to pervert the course of a criminal investigation to his own warped political ends? It was ridiculous. But then, life often is.
I had a buzzing in my ears, flashes in my eyes, and I felt as if I might faint. I suppose it was a form of panic, or euphoria. I have had it once or twice before, when I’ve realized that I am about to have sex with someone.
“So,” said Connor. “Prove it.”
There’s the rub, I thought. Proof. I had none.
“You have to believe me.”
“For all I know, mate, you could be some republican crackpot or religious maniac trying to spread a crazy story about the royal family, or the film industry. We get them every day. I can’t publish without proof. This is a risky enough story as it is. The editor will need a cast-iron case, otherwise the legal actions would be fucking horrific. If you can’t back it up, mate, you’re just pissing in the wind
.”
I couldn’t let him go like this. He was ready to believe me—possibly ready to help—but without proof, I was wasting my time. And time was in even shorter supply than proof. The crowd was surging around the stage door. Hugo Taylor and Tallulah Bankhead would soon be coming out. I had to move. What could I do?
Simmonds suddenly appeared at my side.
“Mitch!”
“Not now, Simmonds. I’m trying to think.”
“Mitch, come quickly!”
“What is it? Not Taylor…” I had a sudden, horrible suspicion that the hair dryer had, after all, done its lethal work.
“No. It’s Godwin.”
Godwin! My cock-hungry little policeman! Back so soon! I followed Simmonds’s pointing finger, and there stood PC Jack Godwin, still in plain clothes, accompanied by another police officer in uniform. He was beckoning me over.
“Here’s your proof,” I said to Connor. “Straight from the horse’s mouth.”
He followed me over. I shook Godwin by the hand.
“What have you got for me, Jack?”
“It’s not me, sir. It’s my sergeant here. Mr. Mitchell—Sergeant Shipton.
Shipton? Surely not…
The uniformed sergeant held out a hand. “Evening, Mitch.”
“Bill Shipton? I don’t believe it!”
“You been corrupting young officers in public toilets again, Mitch?” He grinned, and I remembered our first encounter in that faraway pisshouse on the Norfolk coast. “I may have to take you in for questioning.”
I shook his hand warmly; he was even more handsome than I remembered. I was at a loss for words; his sudden presence, here, in the middle of London, at the critical turning point of the entire case, had knocked my sense of reality dangerously sideways—just like that moment when we lurched into the secret tunnel. And once again I was groping in the dark.
But Sergeant Shipton had a light.
“You’re looking for a body, I understand from young Godwin here.” He laid a fraternal hand on the young constable’s shoulder. “No surprises there, I said; my friend Mitch is always looking for a nice body. But in this case I understand it’s a stiff. If you’ll pardon the expression.”
“Very stiff, and very cold.”
Shipton pulled out his notebook. He and Connor eyed each other suspiciously—and with a certain curiosity, unless I was much mistaken. Bertrand would have laughed at me again for assuming that everyone shared my tastes, but I had been right about Shipton, and I’d trained him very nicely during our previous acquaintance…
“Who is this?”
“Mr. Connor, from the—which paper do you represent, Mr. Connor?”
“The Daily Beacon.”
“Right,” said Shipton. “This is strictly off the record. Do you understand me, sir? If you reveal your sources for this information, you and your editor will regret it very much indeed.”
“You’re safe in my hands, constable.”
I was not mistaken.
“What can you tell me, Bill?”
“Godwin says you’re interested in one David Rhys, found dead on the Edinburgh-to-London express yesterday, correct?”
“Correct.”
“The death was reported to the Peterborough Constabulary at four P.M.”
“That’s when Dickinson left the train.”
“And an arrest was made shortly after. Mr. William Andrews, on suspicion of murder.”
“So what’s happened?”
“Well, Mitch, this is where things don’t add up. Andrews is in custody, but he’s already been moved down to London before any kind of hearing in Peterborough.”
“Is that normal?”
“No. It’s highly irregular.”
“I see.”
“And then there’s the question of the body.”
“What about it? Has there been an autopsy? Have they established the cause of death?”
“No.”
“Why not, for Christ’s sake?”
“Because, if you’ll let me get a word in edgeways, the body has gone missing.”
“What? What do you mean? How can a dead body go missing?”
“Good question. The paperwork was signed at the Peterborough police morgue. The body should be there. But when I called them just now, the place was in uproar. There was nobody.”
“What—nobody to answer the phone?”
“No, Mitch. No body. No corpse. In short, no David Rhys.”
Morgan and Belinda were waving frantically above the throng. I pushed my way through the crowd to meet them.
“Where have you been, Mitch?” Morgan demanded.
“Never mind that. What news?”
“They were watching him like a hawk, Lady Antonia and her pals.”
“Who?”
“The Prince, of course. Couldn’t take their eyes off him. But thanks to my intrepid wife, they didn’t get near him.”
“Just a little womanly ingenuity,” said Belinda, looking quietly pleased with herself. “I told Lady Antonia that my father had a vast amount of money to invest, and that he was, shall we say, sympathetic to their cause.” She shuddered. “None of which is true. Poor Daddy is broke, and he would rather cut his own throat than support that gang of crooks, but there you go. Needs must.”
“They seemed frightfully interested in money, didn’t they?” said Morgan.
“You can be sure of that. All these crackpot political parties are in it for the money. No doubt they’ve got Lady Antonia to hock her entire estate.”
“Well, those diamonds she’s wearing are paste,” said Belinda. “A woman notices these things.”
“Not surprised, the way you were examining them, old girl,” Morgan said. “You practically bit them.”
“And didn’t she love showing them off? Oh well, kept them busy throughout the interval. No harm done. Hugo and Tallulah got standing ovations. No bullets rang out above the crowd. And, judging by the squeals coming from around the corner, I imagine that they have emerged to face their adoring public.” Belinda had a sardonic streak; she was a good foil to the eager, trusting Morgan.
“Oh, I say! Can we go and have a look?” Morgan said enthusiastically. “I’m dying to see them at close quarters.”
“You’ll have plenty of opportunity to do that later,” I said. “We’re going to the party.”
“I say, are we really? How ripping!”
Sometimes, Morgan was just too preposterously English for his own good. I longed to slap his beaming face with my cock, before stopping his mouth with it. But that would have to wait.
I looked around the corner for just long enough to confirm that Hugo Taylor was alive and well and not covered in hideous burns. He and Tallulah were busy signing autographs and posing for photographs, and I saw the gilded locks of Frankie Laking hovering behind them.
“Let’s go and stake out the Café Royal,” I said. “I want to watch everyone come in.”
We stepped off the pavement—and as we did so, I heard the approaching roar of a car, the screech of breaks, a thump. A black sedan sped away toward the river.
“Oh, my God! Belinda!”
Morgan crouched over his wife, who was sprawled in the road, one leg pointing out at a crazy angle from the knee.
She was alive. Her head had hit the curbstone, but fortunately she’d broken her fall with her hand. Her wrist may have been broken and her leg badly sprained.
“That bastard!” Morgan ran down the road in pursuit of the car, but I called him back.
“Someone call an ambulance! Boy, stay with her.”
Simmonds ran into the theater, while Morgan peeled off his coat and jacket to cover his wife, who was cold with shock. His eyes were full of tears. “What happened, Mitch?”
“It could have been an accident.”
“But it wasn’t, was it? They were aiming at us.”
“I don’t know, Boy.” But I did know. I could see it all too clearly. They had been aiming at me.
I positi
oned myself at the head of the stairs, where I could watch the guests arriving at the Café Royal. Undoubtedly there was a rear entrance as well, but now I was working on my own, and I couldn’t cover it. Bertrand had disappeared, and Simmonds had gone to look for him—pointlessly, I thought, but I could hardly stop him. Morgan was with Belinda at the hospital. Shipton and Godwin had gone to dig out all they could on the Rhys case, while Connor and Scott had returned to the Beacon to file what they hoped would be the scoop of the century.
I felt vulnerable. If they—whoever “they” were—were looking for me, I was a conspicuous target. I kept my back to the wall; at least I’d see any attack coming.
“Mitch, you fascinating creature!” I felt a hand on my ass; so much for not being taken from behind. “How delicious to find you here.”
“Hello, Frankie.”
“And all alone! Don’t tell me my luck has changed at last.”
“That depends, Frankie.”
“Ooh! Sounds promising. What do you want? Money? I don’t carry a great deal of cash, but I can usually rustle up something.”
“Not money. Information.”
“Go on then. Pump me.”
“Well, first of all—”
“I said, pump me.”
“Oh. I see.”
“Fair exchange, and all that.” He pouted and started talking like a baby, an affectation of his set that I found utterly disgusting. “If ’oo want Fwankie to spill beany-weanies, ’oo let Fwankie pway wiv your willy.”
“For God’s sake, Frankie—”
“Otherwise,” he said, snapping back to his clipped Mayfair tones, “my lips will remain sealed. In more ways than one. Oh, I say! That’s rather witty! I shall have to tell Noël. Perhaps he’ll put it in a show.”