English Rose (A Jules Poiret Mystery Book 13)

by Frank Howell Evans

  The lord greeted him by inquiring, “Well, well, how do you do, my dear Inspector Watkins? You have risen in good time this morning, it seems to me. Or else it’s I, who is going to bed too late.”

  “Milord,” said Watkins, “my men are in pursuit of a young woman named Lois Ashby. We have seen her go into The Red Lion. Have you seen her?”

  “Good Lord, Mr. Watkins, I’m not the concierge of The Red Lion. Forgive me for not noticing nobody. I’m naturally a little sleepy. Pardon me.”

  Watkins did not move out of his way.

  “Mr. Holloway, it’s not possible that you have not seen Lois Ashby.”

  “You have made a mistake, Mr. Watkins. Pardon me!”

  But Watkins again stood still in his way.

  “Lord, consider that this business is very serious. Adam Ashby is dead and this little woman has stolen his papers from his body. Can you swear to me that you have not seen or spoken to Lois Ashby?”

  The lord looked at Watkins so insolently that the policeman turned pale with rage.

  “Call my solicitors!”

  Holloway walked past him. His driver opened the door of the car for him. The lord stepped in. Watkins watched him roll away, raging at heart. Just then his men came up.

  “Go search!” he said roughly, pointing into The Red Lion.

  They scattered throughout the establishment, entering all the rooms. Cries of irritation and of protest arose. Those lingering after the latest of late suppers were not pleased at this invasion of the police. Everybody had to rise while the policemen looked under the tables, the benches, the long table-cloths. They went into the pantries and down into the kitchens. There was no sign of Lois Ashby. Suddenly Watkins, who was leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette and looking vaguely out on the horizon, waiting for the outcome of the search, got a start. Yonder, far away a small boat reached the shore and a little black spot jumped from it like a flea. Watkins recognized the little black spot as Lois Ashby. She was safe.

  The sergeant came to him and said, “No luck. We haven’t found the woman, but she was here. She met Lord Holloway and gave him something then slipped out the back door.”

  “I thought so.” The inspector shrugged his shoulders. “I was sure of it.”

  While the inspector was at the entrance of The Red Lion, Poiret was sitting on a bench looking out on the cliffs and the water of The English Channel. He was smoking a cigar without any impatience.

  “I was looking for you,” cried the inspector. “We have failed. By your fault!”

  Watkins choked with rage.

  “Mon ami,” said Poiret, taking him by the arm, “calm yourself. Your men, they are watching us. Come and we will have the cup of tea.”

  “Are you laughing at me? Do you think you can mock me?”

  But the inspector saw quickly that Poiret had no mockery in his manner.

  “Poiret,” he insisted, “since you speak seriously, I have to know…”

  “It is useless, mon ami,” said Poiret. “It is very necessary that you do not know. The commission of Poiret, it is to make sure the weapons trader Mr. Hassocks, he is not murdered. He is alive.”

  “When, then, will you tell me something to explain what is going on?”

  Poiret looked at the inspector and declared solemnly, “Monsieur Watkins, please to recall what Mademoiselle Kimberley, she has said. Never.”

  At ten o’clock that morning Poiret went to the Hassocks mansion, which had its guard of policemen in plain clothes again. Watkins was sure that the Communists would try to avenge the death of Adam Ashby. Poiret was met by Carswell at the gate. He would not allow him to enter. The faithful servant uttered some explanation and Poiret understood perfectly that henceforth the door of the mansion was closed to him. In vain he insisted on seeing the arms manufacturer, Lady Hassocks and Mademoiselle Kimberley. Carswell shook his head in reply. The little man turned away without having seen anyone and walked away deeply shaken. He went on foot into town, a long walk, during which his brain surged with the darkest forebodings. As he walked past the police station he decided to see Inspector Watkins again. He went in, gave his name and was taken at once to the inspector, whom he found bent over a long report that he was reading through with noticeable agitation.

  “Secretary Bromley has sent me this,” he said in a rough voice, pointing to the report. “Bromley tells me that he’s fully aware of all that happened at the Hassocks mansion last night. He warns me that the Communists have decided to go through with the assassination of the arms manufacturer and that two of them have been given the mission to get it done, no matter how.” Watkins finished, turning hostilely toward Poiret. “Who?”

  Poiret turned pale.

  “What you say, Monsieur Watkins, it does not surprise Poiret. They believe that Kimberley, she has betrayed them.”

  “Ah, then you admit at last that she really is their accomplice?”

  “Poiret, he has not said that and he does not admit it. Poiret, at this moment, he is the only person, who is able to save you and Monsieur Hassocks in this horrible situation. To do so, Poiret, he must see Kimberley at once. Please to tell to her, Poiret, he must talk to her. You can reach Poiret at his hotel.”

  Poiret greeted Watkins and went out.

  Two days went by during which Poiret didn’t receive any word from either Kimberley or Watkins. Each day he went to the restaurant of the hotel, ordered his meal and wrote a letter to Kimberley imploring her to allow him to see her. The minutes went by very slowly for him in the restaurant.

  Installed at his table, he seemed to have become part of the hotel staff and more than one guest took him for a French chef of the hotel and complained about his meal. The hotel staff looked at his expensive clothes and thought he was a man of leisure, who had fallen for the charms of the beautiful Roxy and was awaiting her return as he looked through the window at her apartment just across the street. If that was so, he could only bewail his luck, because Roxy didn’t appear either at her apartment or the hotel or at the Avalon.

  But Poiret’s thoughts were not with Roxy, but with Kimberley. He waited for only one thing and that was to have a private interview with Kimberley. He had written her ten letters in two days, but they were all returned to sender. It was an answer that he waited for so impatiently in the restaurant of the hotel. He was impatient, very nervous and anguished. The death of Adam Ashby had shaken him to his soul and as long as he did not know the whole truth, he could not be without the slightest doubt that there was no innocent blood on his hands, that his conscience was clear.

  When the postman entered the hotel, the little man’s heart beat quickly. The letter he was waiting for would decide his fate. But the letter didn’t come. The postman left and the hotel clerk, after examining all the letters, would shake his head.

  Finally, at six o’clock in the evening of the second day, a man in a suit came in and handed the hotel clerk a letter for Mr. Jules Poiret. The hotel clerk came into the restaurant and looked at him. The detective jumped up. He tore open the envelope and read it. The letter wasn’t from Kimberley. It was from Bromley.

  It said, “Dear Mr. Poiret, if it will not inconvenience you, I wish you would come and dine with me today. I will look for you within two hours. Mrs. Bromley will be pleased to make your acquaintance. With My Regards, Bromley.”

  Poiret considered that he might learn more from the secretary than he from Poiret and decided to accept the pleasantly written invitation.

  From six o’clock to seven he waited in vain for Kimberley’s response. At seven o’clock, he decided to go up to his room and dress for the dinner. Just as he walked through the vestibule of the hotel, a messenger arrived. There was another letter for Jules Poiret. This time it was from Kimberley.

  She wrote him, “Mr. Hassocks and my stepmother will be very happy to have you come to dinner today. As for myself, sir, please pardon me the order which has closed to you for a number of days a house, where you have rendered services, which I shall n
ot forget all my life.”

  The letter ended politely, but vaguely. With the letter in his hand the consulting detective sat in thought. He would soon know the meaning of the letter, because he decided to accept the invitation. Anything that brought him and Kimberley into contact at that moment was of paramount importance to him. Half an hour later he gave the address of the mansion to a cabdriver and soon he stepped out in front of the gate where Carswell seemed to be waiting for him.

  Poiret was so occupied by the thought of the conversation he was going to have with Kimberley that he had completely forgotten Bromley’s invitation.

  Carswell ushered Poiret through the gate with shining face. He seemed glad to have him there again. The consulting detective found Watkins’s agents all over the garden grounds. Lady Hassocks had not wished any agent to be in the house. As Poiret came closer to the house, he saw Lady Hassocks walking with her stepdaughter. They seemed on the best of terms with each other. The garden grounds had an air of tranquility and the residents seemed to have totally forgotten the somber tragedy of the other night. Lady Hassocks and Kimberley came smilingly up to the little man, who inquired after Mr. Hassocks. They both turned and pointed out Stephen Hassocks, who waved to him from the height of the gazebo, where it seemed the table had been spread. They were going to dine out of doors that fine evening.

  “Everything goes very well, very well indeed, Mr. Poiret,” said Lady Hassocks. “How good to see you and to thank you. I know how unjust my daughter was to you. But dear Kimberley knows now what she owes you. Mr. Ashby was a monster and he was punished as he deserved. You know the police have proof now that he was one of the Communists’ most committed activists, a bruiser, they called him. And he a doctor! Sir, whom can we trust anymore?”

  “And Monsieur Ian, have you seen him since that night?” inquired Poiret.

  “Mr. Spencer called to see us today, to say goodbye, but we didn’t receive him. Kimberley has written to him. And we have received letters from him. He’s leaving Folkestone.”

  “Pourquoi?”

  “What for? Well, after what happened at his little house, when he learned how Adam had found his death and after undergoing a severe grilling from the police, he decided to move to Cornwall. So far as I’m concerned, I think he’s doing absolutely right. When a young man is a poet at heart, it’s useless to live like a soldier, like Mr. Ashby. And when one has ideas that may upset other people, surely they ought to live in solitude.”

  Poiret looked at Kimberley, who was as pale as her white gown and who added no word to her mother’s outburst. They had come near the gazebo. Poiret greeted the arms manufacturer. When the little man extended his hand, Mr. Hassocks abruptly embraced him. To show Poiret how much his health had improved he marched up and down the gazebo with only the aid of a stick.

  “They haven’t got me yet, the dogs. They haven’t got me! And the one they put in my house, I ask you, where is he now? And yet I am here! Why, I remember the Boer War, when I was in Johannesburg. We fought. Several times I could feel the swish of bullets past my hair. My friends fell around me like flies. But nothing happened to me, not a thing. And here now! They will not get me. You know they are sending two more agents to do me in. Yes, they have decided on that. What do you think of that? But they won’t get me. Come, drink to my health. A small glass of sherry for an appetizer. You see, my dear fellow, we are going to have dinner, right here. What a marvelous view! You can see the English Channel from here. And if the enemy comes,” he added with a remarkable loud laugh, “we can’t fail to detect him.”

  The gazebo was built high above the garden and was completely detached. They had a clear view. No branches of trees hung over the roof and no tree hid the view. The rustic table of rough wood was covered with a short cloth. It was a meal under the open sky. The evening couldn’t have been softer and clearer. And as Hassocks was in the best of moods, the meal would have promised to be most agreeable, if Poiret had not noticed that Lady Hassocks and Kimberley were uneasy and downcast. The detective soon saw that the arms manufacturer’s joviality was a little too excessive. Poiret noticed further that he never looked at his daughter, even when he spoke to her. Poiret involuntarily shook his head, saddened by all he saw.

  “Well, now,” said the arms manufacturer, “well, now, where is the sherry?”

  Among all the bottles which graced the table the arms manufacturer looked in vain for his bottle of sherry.

  “How in the world can I dine if I can’t have two or three little glasses of white wine?”

  “Carswell must have left it in the wine closet,” said Lady Hassocks.

  The wine closet was in the dining room. She rose to go get the bottle, but Kimberley hurried before her down the little flight of steps, crying, “Stay there, mama. I will go.”

  “Poiret, he knows where it is. He will go,” cried Poiret and hurried after Kimberley.

  She didn’t stop. He arrived in the dining room shortly after her. They were there alone, as Poiret had foreseen. He planted himself in front of Kimberley, who had the bottle of sherry already in her hand.

  “Why, Mademoiselle, did you not answer Poiret earlier?”

  “Because I don’t wish to talk to you.”

  “If that was the truth, Mademoiselle, you would not have come here, where you were sure Poiret, he would follow you.”

  She hesitated, with an emotion that would have been incomprehensible to all others, but wasn’t to Poiret.

  “I wished to say this to you, sir, don’t write to me anymore, don’t speak to me and don’t see me. Go away from here, sir. They will have your life. And if you have found out anything, forget it or you are lost. That is what I wished to tell you.”

  She grasped his hand in a quick sympathetic movement that she seemed instantly to regret.

  “Go away,” she repeated.

  Poiret still held his place in front of her. She turned away from him. She didn’t wish to hear anything he said.

  “Mademoiselle,” he said, “Poiret, he is here for you.”

  He said this with such simple bravery that tears sprang to her eyes.

  “Dear brave man! Foolish man!”

  She didn’t know what to say, but it was necessary for her to make him understand that there was nothing he could do to help her in her sad straits.

  “Mademoiselle, please one more word, a single word. Do you doubt now that Monsieur Adam, he tried to poison your father?”

  “Ah, I wish to believe it. I wish to believe it for your sake, Mr. Poiret.”

  Poiret desired something more. She saw him turn pale. She tried to reassure him.

  “I have decided that only one and the same person, as you said, climbed to the window of the little balcony. Yes, no one can doubt that.”

  But he persisted still.

  “And yet, in spite of that, you are not entirely sure about Monsieur Adam.”

  “Mr. Poiret, someone might have tried to poison my father and not have come by way of the window.”

  “C’est impossible!”

  “Nothing is impossible to them.”

  She turned and ran around the sofa to the door. Poiret followed her.

  “If that is the only doubt she has,” he said to himself, “Poiret, he can reassure her. No one, he could come, except for by the window and only one, he came that way.”

  They crossed the garden together, walking to the arms manufacturer, who was whiling away the time as he waited for his sherry explaining to Lady Hassocks the nature of Pacifism. He had spilt a box of matches on the table and arranged them carefully.

  “Here,” he cried to Kimberley and Poiret. “Look here and I will explain to you as well what this Pacifism amounts to.”

  All eyes in the gazebo were intent on the matches.

  “You see these matches?” asked Stephen Hassocks. “It’s a country with an army with modern weapons. And these matches over here are another country with an army with modern weapons.”

  The whole box of matches was spli
t in two on the table, except for one which the arms manufacturer held in his hand.

  “Well,” he continued, “do you want to know, Lady Hassocks, what Pacifism is? There! That is Pacifism.”

  The arms manufacturer, with a swoop of his fingers lit the match and set the other matches alight. All jumped up in shock. Lady Hassocks threw a glass of water on the two small burning fires.

  “Are you mad, Stephen?”

  “No, but the Pacifists are.”

  Then Lady Hassocks understood. She laughed heartily, she laughed violently and Kimberley laughed also. Delighted with his success, Stephen Hassocks took up one of the little glasses that Kimberley had filled with the sherry she brought.

  He said, “Watkins ought to have been here by now.”

  Saying this, holding still the little glass in his hand he felt in his pocket with the other for his watch and took out a magnificent large watch, whose ticking was easily heard.

  “Ah, the watch, it has come back from the repairer, Madame?” Poiret remarked smilingly to Lady Hassocks.

  “It has very fine works,” said the arms manufacturer. “It was bequeathed to me by my grandfather. It marks the seconds and the phases of the moon and sounds the hours and half-hours.”

  Poiret put on his glasses and bent over the watch, admiring it.

  “You expect Inspector Watkins for the dinner, Monsieur?” inquired the little man, still examining the watch.

  “Yes, but since he’s so late, we’ll not delay any longer. Your health,” said the arms manufacturer as Poiret handed him back the watch and he put it in his pocket.