An Act of Villainy

by Ashley Weaver

  “You offered to telephone the police and she refused,” he said. “Miss Bell was a woman very capable of making her own decisions. The notes were addressed to her, and if she did not want the police contacted then there was not much you could do about it.”

  He was right, to a certain extent. Flora Bell had been adamant that she didn’t want the police involved.

  I suddenly began to wonder why she had been so insistent. Did she know more about the matter than she claimed? Did it have something to do with the locked drawer of her dressing table?

  “What are you thinking about?” Inspector Jones asked quietly.

  I looked up. I wondered if I should say something about the drawer. Surely the police would have opened it if they thought it important. I decided instead to mention the other matter on my mind.

  “She was strongly against the presence of the police, and I am beginning to wonder if she might have been trying to protect someone.”

  “Her brother, perhaps?” he said, reaching the same conclusion I had.

  “That would make the most sense,” I replied. “Perhaps she suspected that he was sending the letters to frighten her and didn’t believe that he would do her harm.”

  “An interesting conjecture,” Inspector Jones said. “I look forward to having a word with the young man.”

  I looked up, surprised. “You haven’t spoken with him yet?”

  “No. I’m afraid Mr. Bell has proven … elusive.”

  So Freddy Bell had been dodging the police. That did not seem to be a point in his favor. Of course, he had just lost his sister, his only living relative so far as I knew. It could not be an easy thing to reconcile himself to.

  I wondered if I should tell Inspector Jones that Milo had located him at his gambling club and was currently trying to learn more about his whereabouts, but I decided against it. If I could speak to Freddy Bell tonight, I was sure he would reveal more to me than if he was questioned by the police.

  “Have you any other leads?” I asked Inspector Jones, hoping my change of subject was not too abrupt.

  “There’s one more thing,” he said. “You mentioned Balthazar Lebeau told you he had a meeting with a producer that night of the gala.”

  “Yes,” I said. I should have known Inspector Jones would not miss this angle. “He said he was leaving the gala to meet with him.”

  “When I asked for the name of this gentleman, Mr. Lebeau was unable to provide any other information. Said he had received a telegram arranging the meeting but he had thrown it out.”

  “But surely someone must have seen him with the gentleman?”

  Inspector Jones shook his head. “According to Mr. Lebeau, the gentleman did not keep the meeting.”

  Strange. It was possible, of course, that it was a legitimate story and the producer in question had been detained. However, I wondered if there was something more to this story than met the eye.

  “It’s very odd,” I mused.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Have you any theories?” I asked.

  “A few,” he replied, his expression growing, in that inevitable way, slightly more guarded when faced with a question, “but nothing much more to share at the moment. As I said, I was just in the neighborhood and thought I would drop by.”

  “Then this might almost be considered a social call,” I said with a smile. “You haven’t taken your notebook out yet. I’ll take that as a good sign.”

  He smiled back. “Am I as officious as all that?”

  “I don’t know whether you realize it, Inspector, but you’re very intimidating.”

  “I shouldn’t have thought anything could intimidate you, Mrs. Ames,” he said.

  “I shall take that as a compliment. You might tell Mr. Ames, too. He seems to think my lack of timidity a weakness rather than a strength.”

  “I think Mr. Ames is well aware of your strengths and is learning to appreciate them,” he said. “You’ll pardon me for saying so, but I’ve always thought that you and Mr. Ames made better allies than enemies.” Inspector Jones had been witness to several of the problems in my marriage, and I had always felt that he was someone who sympathized.

  “Things are … much improved, thank you,” I said.

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “And how are your wife and daughters?” I asked.

  I had never met the inspector’s family, but it had been, somehow, intriguing to me to find that he had one. Our interactions had always been professional, not social, so it always seemed a bit foreign that he engaged in normal family pursuits. I somehow had a difficult time picturing him sitting with his family playing cards and listening to the wireless. What kind of music did policemen prefer?

  “They’re very well, thank you,” he said. As usual, he volunteered no more information than was necessary, no doubt a habit of his profession that had extended itself to his personal life.

  “Well, I suppose I shan’t keep you any longer,” he said, rising from his seat. “Thank you for taking the time to talk with me, though I arrived unannounced.”

  “We should be happy to entertain you any time,” I said sincerely.

  He left and I thought how glad I was that we were on such friendly terms. Of course, he was not going to be happy if he learned we had been keeping Freddy Bell’s whereabouts from him.

  But one problem at a time.

  * * *

  INSPECTOR JONES HAD not been gone for ten minutes when the telephone rang. It was Mrs. Roland.

  “I don’t have much time to talk, dear,” she said without preamble. “It’s nearly time for my fencing lesson. However, I’ve just remembered something that might be of use to you. It’s about that Harris girl.”

  “Dahlia Dearborn?” I asked, suddenly alert.

  “Yes. I’ve remembered what the trouble was. There was a fencing instructor involved; that’s what called it to mind. I was just preparing for my lesson when it all came rushing back. There was an instructor at Miss Harris’s school. He was young, and, one assumes, French. Miss Harris, or Dearborn, developed a schoolgirl’s crush on him, but it was one of the other girls who was his star pupil. Apparently, Miss Harris grew resentful and wrote, shall we say, inappropriate letters to the instructor, signing the other girl’s name.”

  “She wrote letters, did she?” I said, my pulse picking up the pace.

  “It caused a great scandal, and the other girl was very nearly sent home, but it all came out at last and Miss Harris was reprimanded severely. Of course, her family was influential and the whole thing was smoothed over rather quickly. You know how such things go.”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” I said, my mind spinning.

  “Well, I must dash. My instructor is rather charming himself.” She gave a deep laugh. “Good-bye, Mrs. Ames.”

  She rang off, and I set the telephone down, lost in thought. So Miss Dearborn had once employed letter-writing as a strategy. I remembered how she had paled when I had mentioned the threatening letters during our conversation in her dressing room. Had it been fear that she was found out? Her school days were long behind her and she had a different name now, so perhaps she had thought there would never be anything to connect her to that tactic. It hadn’t worked for her before, but I couldn’t help but wonder if she had decided to give it another try.

  19

  MILO, PREDICTABLY, WAS not home for dinner. After I had eaten, I went into the sitting room, where Emile kept me company. I tried to keep from glancing expectantly at the telephone, with limited success.

  It was close to midnight, and I was just about to go to bed, when the telephone rang.

  I hurried to answer it, and was both surprised and glad to find that it was Milo.

  “Darling, I know it’s late but I’m with Freddy Bell. I’m afraid he’s losing rather a lot of money, so I don’t expect they’ll let him continue his gambling for long. If you want to talk to him, you’d better hurry.”

  “Where are you?” I asked.

 
Milo gave me the name and address of the gambling club, and I scribbled it on a little notebook near the telephone.

  “Don’t let him leave,” I said, reaching for my handbag and gloves. “I’m on my way.”

  * * *

  I TOOK A cab to the address Milo had given me, as he had taken the car earlier in the day.

  Alighting from the vehicle, I found myself on a well-lit street, a great deal of people in evening dress milling about. Apparently, this was a fashionable nightspot, though I had certainly never been here before and the condition of the neighborhood was nothing to speak of.

  I glanced again at the slip of paper in my hand. The address in question corresponded to a nondescript building at the corner of the street. It seemed it was the sort of gambling club that did not like to advertise itself. Before I could move toward it, however, a gentleman approached me. He was dressed in a somewhat shabby tweed suit with a cap pulled down low over his eyes, and I had the distinct impression I had seen someone in an identical ensemble in an American gangster film.

  “Mrs. Ames, is it?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Yes,” I admitted cautiously.

  “Your husband says to tell you that he’s in the café across the street.” He nodded in the direction of a poorly maintained building on the corner that I would not have taken for a café at first glance.

  How very like Milo to send an underworld character to fetch me so that he could remain comfortably settled in the café. I did hope this meant that he had managed to keep hold of Freddy Bell.

  I thanked the man and tipped him before walking across the street and into the café. The interior was only marginally more cheerful than the exterior had been. The lighting was poor and the worn tables sat atop a scuffed tile floor. This did not seem to adversely affect business, however, for there were a great many people inside. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, and a radio somewhere behind the counter was playing a mournful jazz tune.

  “You want a table, miss?” a waitress with a dirty apron and untidy hair asked me.

  “No … I’m meeting someone,” I said, looking around the room for Milo. I spotted him sitting at a table in the corner with Freddy Bell. “There they are. Thank you.”

  Milo looked up as I moved toward the table and started to rise, but I put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Don’t get up, gentlemen,” I said as I slid into a seat beside him. “I don’t want to interrupt.”

  Freddy Bell didn’t seem to have heard me. He sat with an empty plate and a cup of coffee on the table before him. I had wondered how Milo had managed to lure him here, but it seemed that a meal might have been incentive enough. I suddenly doubted Freddy Bell had been getting enough to eat since his sister died.

  “Hello, Mr. Bell,” I said softly. “We met at the theatre and again at the gala.”

  He looked up at me, a bit of a startled expression on his face. He looked different from when I had seen him last, and I realized the youthful confidence had been replaced by a look of sadness.

  “Yes, I remember,” he said at last.

  “I’m very sorry about the loss of your sister.”

  “Thank you.” There was something very restrained about his responses, as though he was trying very hard to keep his emotions in check. I remembered how he had looked in the photograph at the funeral, a bit bewildered by this sudden shifting of his world on its axis.

  “Would you care for something to eat, miss?” the waitress asked suddenly, having followed me to the table.

  “No, thank you. Perhaps just a cup of tea.”

  “Very well, miss.”

  She went off to fetch it, and I turned back to Freddy Bell.

  He had picked up his spoon and was listlessly stirring his coffee.

  “I know Flora was very special to you.”

  He nodded.

  “Tell me, what was she like?” I asked.

  He looked up at me as though I had asked a silly question. “You met her,” he said.

  “Yes,” I replied. “But I’m sure a meeting with her as an actress did not represent who she really was.”

  He seemed to consider this for a moment, and then he spoke. “She was a good sister. Oh, we quarreled more than our share, but I always knew that she meant to do right by me.”

  “I could tell she cared a great deal for you.”

  It was as though, with these words, I had broken through some sort of barrier. He seemed to forget that Milo was there, and leaned toward me, his eyes filled with tears. “It was just the two of us. She was the last of my family. Now that she’s dead, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “‘Chin up, Freddy,’ that’s what she would have said. No matter how bad things go, she’d always tell me, ‘Chin up. Things’ll work out all right in the end.’ I expect she’d tell me that now if she could.”

  “I’m sure she would,” I said sincerely.

  “I’ve had a bit of hard luck lately, too. Flora had some money put by, and I could certainly use it. But that old witch of a landlady won’t let me into her room. She doesn’t like men, it seems. Wouldn’t let me in the house, even though I was Flora’s own brother.”

  “Well, I’m sure the police will be able to retrieve things for you,” I said.

  “I still can’t believe she’s gone,” he whispered, and the brokenness in his tone brought tears to my eyes. “‘Family’s important, don’t you think?’ she said to me not long ago. ‘Blood matters more than anything else in the end.’ Now the last of my blood is gone.”

  “I know it’s been a dreadful shock. It was all so unexpected.”

  “She should never have got involved with this play. Never should have taken up with Mr. Holloway. Our mum always tried to discourage her, always said the theatre would lead to a bad end for Flora. I expect she was right.”

  I searched for something comforting to say, but Freddy Bell charged ahead without waiting for platitudes.

  “It was Landon’s fault,” he said bitterly.

  I glanced at Milo before turning my attention back to Freddy Bell. “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “He broke her heart, and she turned to Holloway.”

  Now I was confused. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “She was involved with Landon before Holloway,” he said, as though that explained it all.

  “Yes, I know,” I replied. “But I was given to understand that it was she who broke it off.”

  He shook his head. “I came into her dressing room one day after she had gone to see him and found her crying. When I asked her what was wrong she said, ‘I never should have fallen in love with an actor. They’re too good at pretending.’”

  “Did you ask her what she meant?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I tried to comfort her as best I could. But I think it was why she took up with Holloway like she did. She said, ‘One can’t go on living in the past; it isn’t healthy.’ Of course, I don’t think she really believed that. She wanted to get back at Landon, all right.”

  This story certainly didn’t fit with Mr. Landon’s account. I wondered now if he, too, had been putting on a performance onstage this afternoon.

  “‘It’s just like in the play,’” Freddy Bell said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “That’s what Flora said to me the night she died.”

  “What do you mean?” I pressed.

  “She said, ‘Everything’s gone wrong. It’s just like in the play.’”

  The Price of Victory was a story of love lost. Did she mean her affair with Mr. Landon? Or perhaps she had sensed that Holloway was trying to break things off, as Georgina had said.

  “Do you think things were going poorly between her and Holloway?” Milo asked.

  “I don’t know. Flora wasn’t much of one for confiding in people. She always kept a stiff upper lip. She wanted to protect me from things, I think, but I should have protected her. I … If I had only known that something was rea
lly wrong.”

  “Then you didn’t know about the letters?” I asked.

  He looked up, and I was certain that, for just an instant, fear crossed his features. “No,” he said. “What sort of letters?”

  “Letters telling her that she should leave the play.”

  “She didn’t tell me anything about that,” he said. “But I suppose if the police find the writer, they’ll find the killer.”

  “The police are trying to get information from everyone who was at the gala; they haven’t been able to reach you,” I said.

  It was the wrong thing to say.

  He rose from his seat suddenly, the chair wobbling, its legs clattering against the tiles. “I’ve taken up too much of your time. Thank you for the dinner, Mr. Ames. And thank you for taking the time to talk with me.”

  “I was glad to, Mr. Bell,” I said, though it felt strange to call him Mr. Bell at this moment, for he seemed suddenly very young.

  He walked away, and I felt a little stab of pity for him, along with the uncomfortable sensation that he was hiding something.

  * * *

  WE WENT TO bed when we arrived home, but I couldn’t sleep. My mind kept turning over the murder, and I found that the more I thought about it the more disturbing everything was. I couldn’t seem to make sense of any of it.

  “What are you thinking about?” Milo asked into the darkness.

  “How did you know I was awake?” I asked.

  “You breathe differently when you’re asleep,” he said. “Besides, I can feel how rigid you are, like a marble statue but with exceptionally soft skin. What’s the matter?”

  I sighed. “I’ve been thinking about this murder.”

  “I know that,” he said. “There’s little chance you’d be thinking of anything else. I mean what aspect of it is troubling you?”

  “For one thing, I’m sorry for Freddy Bell,” I said.

  “Freddy Bell can take care of himself,” Milo said.

  “I know he seems hardened in some ways, but he’s still very young. Flora’s death is bound to affect him greatly. I do hope he’ll be all right.”

  “I’d wager that was just the sort of impression he hoped to make on you,” Milo said. “He seemed to be doing well enough when I bribed him to come and speak to us.”