The Death of Kings

by Rennie George Airth

  Also by Rennie Airth

  RIVER OF DARKNESS

  THE BLOOD-DIMMED TIDE

  THE DEAD OF WINTER

  THE RECKONING

  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  penguin.com

  Copyright © 2017 by Rennie Airth

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  ISBN 9780399563454 (hardcover)

  ISBN 9780399563478 (e-book)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  Also by Rennie Airth

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  PART TWO Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  PART THREE Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  EPILOGUE

  For Ronald Vance

  For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground

  And tell sad stories of the death of kings;

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, RICHARD II

  PROLOGUE

  Kent, August 1938

  WHEN SHE HEARD THE stair creak beneath her foot, Portia stopped and stood frozen. Her heartbeat quickened with excitement.

  She didn’t want to be seen. She planned to slip out and then return to her room in time to appear for tea as though nothing had happened; as though she had been resting, which was what she had told the others she would be doing when she had left them in the drawing-room after lunch.

  But there was always the danger that he might be spying on her; keeping a watch on her movements. She knew that he didn’t trust her any longer. He suspected that she might be trying to take matters into her own hands.

  ‘What is this game you’re playing?’ He had come to her room the night before after the household had gone to bed. ‘Are you out of your mind?’ His face, which so seldom showed any feeling, had been stiff with rage. ‘Do you think you’re on the stage? Must you always be the . . . actress?’ He had spat the word out as though it left a bad taste in his mouth. ‘Leave this to me. Just do as you are told.’

  She had tried to calm him, telling him not to worry. ‘They’re in a safe place,’ she had assured him. But she had resented the tone of his angry accusations and the evident scorn he felt for her. As if he weren’t the one playing his own game! She still didn’t know what he was up to—what his scheme involved—only that she had a part in it and would be rewarded in due course.

  Or so he had said. But she no more trusted him than she did any other man. And as it happened his suspicions were justified. Unknown to him she had already put her own plan into action and he was helpless to stop it. The stage had been set; all that was required was for the curtain to go up.

  She knew her lines—she had written them herself—and before leaving she had stood before the full-length mirror in her room taking in not only her appearance but also the expressions on her face as she rehearsed the scene she was about to play.

  She had dressed with care, choosing a simple skirt and blouse, and covered her red hair with a silk scarf. Although the occasion hardly called for a display of jewellery, she had put on the pair of earrings she had been lent for the week-end and then, unable to resist the temptation, had slipped the pendant around her neck as well. Carved in the shape of the Buddha, it was made of jade and deep green in colour—the shade most valued by Chinese emperors, she had been told. She had already removed the paint she had put on her nails the night before—that had been purely for show, and to draw attention to her hands as she played with the pendant—and having examined her reflection in the mirror she went one step further, wiping the lipstick off her mouth. She meant to display a new image of herself, one about which there could be no mistake: that of a woman with a serious purpose, not a plaything to be used and then cast aside at will. As if by reflex she reached for the small leather handbag that was hanging by a strap from her shoulder. Searching for the clasp, she had opened it and slipped her fingers inside. Yes . . . everything she needed was there.

  Now, with the house as silent as a tomb around her, she resumed her descent of the stairs, reaching the empty hall below with its echoing paved floor and then crossing it on tiptoe, padding softly as a cat. Her goal was a long corridor that ran the length of the house, and when she came to it she turned right and made for a door that gave onto the garden.

  She had almost reached the end of the passage when a figure appeared from one of the doorways ahead of her and she slowed her pace, put out at being discovered. But it was only one of the maids, who stood aside, bobbing her head as Portia went by. The door was a few paces farther on, and as she opened it and slipped out into the blazing hot afternoon a wave of relief washed over her.

  Although she didn’t want to admit it—even to herself—she was afraid of him. The men she had known in her life, and there were many—too many—had been mostly of a type and she had learned what to expect of them, which was little enough. But he was different—unreadable, unknowable—and she had sensed that his silent presence and cold, ever-watchful eye signalled a nature more dangerous and less predictable than any other she had encountered in the past.

  The door she had come through gave onto a path that stretched the length of the garden. Walled on either side by high yew hedges whose topmost branches had been trained to meet overhead, it offered a shield against prying eyes—even those that might be watching from the bedroom windows above—and once she had entered the long, cool tunnel she was able to relax and focus her mind on the business ahead. She was already a good ten minutes late for her appointment (deliberately so—she was not the one to be kept waiting) and when she came to a wooden gate in the high brick wall at the bottom of the garden and saw a party of a dozen or more people, both men and women, strolling along a path that crossed the expanse of common land beyond it, she paused and waited while they made their slow way towards the tree-covered knoll which was visible from the terrace of the house behind her and which she had been told bore the name of Holly Hill. She assumed that the casually dressed group were hop pickers; the harvest was in full swing, and driving down from London the day before she h
ad seen the fields surrounding the village busy with pickers. But since today was Sunday she knew they wouldn’t be working and didn’t want the rendezvous to which she was heading disturbed by passers-by.

  As soon as the last of the party had disappeared into the wood she went through the gate and made her way swiftly across the field on a path less trodden than the one they had used. The two paths met on the far side of the meadow just short of the wood, and when Portia got there she glanced over her shoulder to make sure she was not being followed before continuing in the wake of the group whose voices she could hear in the distance ahead of her, plunging into the gloom of the wood whose deep shadow was in stark contrast to the bright sunshine she had just stepped out of.

  She was treading unfamiliar ground. She had never been invited to the house where she was a guest before, so its surroundings were new to her. But she had been given directions easy enough to follow: some way into the wood, near the top of the slight rise she was ascending now, was the ruin of an old hermit’s hut. It was situated a little way off the path, but easy to spot. They were to meet there. As she neared the top of the knoll she began to scan the surrounding trees and presently caught sight of the stone structure. Overhung by a towering beech, it was without a roof; only the walls still stood.

  She stopped to peer at it and as she did she heard the sound of movement behind her. It might have been no more than a twig breaking, but she stood still for long seconds peering into the shadowy depths of the wood, waiting until she was sure that there was no one there. Only when satisfied did she turn back to peer at the ruined hut again, and almost at once caught sight of a figure moving about inside. One moment it appeared at the single window, the next it was standing in the doorway, barely visible in the deep shade cast by the branches overhead.

  Poised to move forward now, she hesitated.

  Was she going too far? Had she over-reached herself?

  She knew what he would say; it was why she had kept it a secret from him.

  Still she felt a tremor of doubt, and for a moment her nerve faltered.

  Then anger came to her rescue, the deep rage that had been building inside her—for years, it seemed. She had been used once too often; humiliated in a way she was no longer prepared to tolerate. It was time someone paid the price.

  An actress, he had called her, and standing there motionless in the wood, she couldn’t help but picture herself as a character in a play, or perhaps a film: a woman of mystery, a woman with a secret. It was the sort of part she had always longed for, and while there were no cameras, no lights adjusted so as to catch her face half in shadow as she waited, she could still comfort herself with the knowledge that hers was the leading role in the drama that was about to unfold.

  Her moment had arrived, the one she had dreamed of, and her only regret was that there was no one to record it, no director standing hidden in the shadows somewhere behind her ready to shout the magic word.

  ‘Action!’

  PART ONE

  1

  London, 1949

  ‘I’M SORRY TO BE the one to tell you, John, but it’s no go. Not on the available evidence. Cradock won’t go along with it, and I see his point.’

  Sitting at ease in his shirtsleeves, with his tie loosened and his cuffs rolled up, Detective Chief Superintendent Chubb settled back in his chair with a sigh. A man whose drooping jowls and moist, dog-like eyes had earned him comparison with a bloodhound in his younger days, together with the nickname ‘Cheerful Charlie’, the chief super’s naturally mournful expression was well suited to the role forced on him that morning as the bearer of bad news.

  ‘He even went so far as to refer to a can of worms, which is not like him at all.’ Chubb shook his head regretfully. ‘For one thing, there’s no proof as yet that these two pendants are one and the same, and even if they are, that doesn’t necessarily mean that a mistake was made in the original investigation.’

  ‘How’s that, Charlie?’

  Madden cocked an eye at him. Old colleagues in the distant past, they were sitting facing each other across a desk in the chief superintendent’s sun-filled office at Scotland Yard. For nearly a week now London had been sweltering in a heat wave and with August not even half done and no sign of a change in the weather, it seemed likely the capital would continue to suffer for a while yet.

  ‘Come on, John.’ Chubb looked discomforted. ‘You know as well as I do that there are nearly always loose ends in any inquiry; it’s rare that all of them are tied up. Just glancing through the file it seems to me there are any number of ways that pendant might have gone missing. For one thing someone else may have picked it up and simply pocketed it; for another it may still be lying around somewhere in the wood. We’ve only the word of this anonymous correspondent that the one he sent to Derry once belonged to Portia Blake.’

  He awaited the other’s reaction. Madden was considering his response.

  ‘Well, I’ll pass on what you say to Angus.’ He spoke finally. ‘But he won’t like it.’

  ‘I’m sure he won’t.’ Chubb winced. The man they were speaking of, Angus Sinclair, formerly a chief inspector, now retired, had once been their superior, and while Chubb was willing to admit that he had learned all he knew under Sinclair’s stern tutelage, he was also wont to claim, only half humorously, that the experience had left him scarred for life.

  ‘He’s very upset about this, Charlie.’ Although Madden, too, had suffered on occasion from the chief inspector’s acid tongue during his time as a detective with the Metropolitan Police, the two men had become friends during the years they had worked together, and on retiring Sinclair had chosen to settle in the same Surrey village of Highfield where Madden and his wife lived. ‘He thinks there may have been a miscarriage of justice. As you’re aware, the man they arrested was eventually hanged. And we all know how Angus feels about capital punishment.’

  Chubb grunted. ‘I never shared his views, mind. If you take a life, you deserve to swing. That’s my opinion.’

  ‘Yes, but what’s bothering Angus now is whether this man, Norris, was in fact guilty. Or was the wrong man sent to the gallows? He won’t rest easy until he’s satisfied on that point.’

  The chief super’s sigh sounded a long-suffering note. Fanning his face with a sheet of paper taken from the file in front of him, he turned to the third person present at their meeting.

  ‘What’s your opinion, Inspector? You’ve read this.’

  Billy Styles hesitated. A detective for close on a quarter of a century now, he owed his early opportunities not only to John Madden, under whom he had cut his teeth in a still famous murder case, but also to Sinclair, the senior officer in charge of the investigation, who had overlooked his inexperience at the time and given him a chance to show his worth. He would have preferred to take their part; but like the chief super he had his misgivings.

  ‘I agree that initially we’d have to show that these two pendants are one and the same—at least as far as the AC is concerned.’ He was referring to the assistant commissioner of crime, Eustace Cradock, their immediate superior and a man with whom Charlie Chubb had never enjoyed the easiest of relationships. ‘He won’t budge otherwise. But actually, after thinking it over, I feel there are one or two other questions that need answering.’

  ‘Do you?’ Chubb eyed the younger man in feigned astonishment. ‘This is the first I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘Well, for one thing, why did she go for a walk, this Portia Blake? There didn’t seem any good reason for it; not right after lunch in the heat of the afternoon. And why did she go alone?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t she?’

  ‘I just thought it strange, her being an actress and all, and a good-looking young woman, too.’ Billy scratched his head.

  ‘I must be slow, Inspector.’ Chubb’s gaze was stony. ‘You’ll have to explain that to me.’

  ‘I think what Billy’s sayi
ng is that it seemed out of character.’ Madden intervened. ‘I thought the same when Angus told me about the case, and so did he apparently—at the time.’

  ‘Then why didn’t he do something about it?’ The chief super was losing patience.

  Madden rubbed his chin.

  ‘The whole trouble with the investigation—and Angus is quite ready to acknowledge that now—is that it was resolved too quickly; too easily. This man Norris was arrested almost at once; all the evidence seemed to indicate he was guilty.’

  ‘It still does. And correct me if I’m wrong—but didn’t he confess to the murder?’

  ‘He did; although he later retracted his confession. But that was part of the problem, you see.’ Madden strove to clarify the issue. ‘Once the Kent police were persuaded they had their man, there seemed no need to continue with the inquiry and the investigation was wound up, leaving certain questions, as Billy says, unanswered.’

  Clearly unhappy with what he was hearing, Chubb growled.

  ‘All right. Let’s say I accept that for the moment. What about this actress? What was so strange about her behaviour?’

  ‘Well, as Billy said, for a start it was a very hot day, yet she chose to go out shortly after two o’clock without telling anyone and when her hosts and the other guests were either resting or otherwise occupied in their rooms. If she hadn’t been spotted by a maid she would have slipped out without anyone noticing. It could be argued that was her intention.’

  Madden frowned.

  ‘She was an attractive young woman with no shortage of admirers and one can’t help but wonder whether she wasn’t on her way to meet one of them. Why go out in the blazing heat of the afternoon otherwise? It might not have been so surprising if she had stayed in the garden. But she left it to walk across a field and into a wood, which was where her body was found.’