“Sebastian Scrivener. But look here, misogyny is only one of several possibilities,” he said cautiously. “And I wouldn’t put it at the top of my list. Scrivener ought to know better than to stir up trouble in the town. I shall have a word with him, but the best way of quietening the press is always to ferret out the truth and make it available as fast as possible. It’s fevered, baseless speculation that does damage. Look again at this length of silk, Miss. Did you ever see this object before the event?”
“No, I don’t think so, though I can’t say I go about checking the haberdashery before every performance.” She studied the exhibit thoughtfully. “It’s made for curtains. There are curtains draped all over the organ loft—bit of a fire hazard with all the candles they use, but it can be a very draughty place in winter. I expect it was used to fasten back one or another.”
“The chapel curtains are all in heavy woven red and gold fabric. No one would have chosen dark-green silk to fasten them back. I would suggest that, in a premeditated act, someone brought in this length of fabric from elsewhere for you to become entangled with it.”
“Oh, for goodness sake! Red? Green? You’re making such a meal of this!” At last, the irritation he’d sensed bubbling beneath the surface burst into the open. “It’s just a bit of fabric! Its colour doesn’t matter more than the identity of the person or persons who planted it on college premises, and whom you can’t begin to identify. I was their victim. And I say ‘their’ deliberately, because this reporter chap has got it in one while you’re fussing about. You should be thinking of protecting him, the voice of free speech. Scrivener is the only man who dares tell the truth in this submissive town. It’s a conspiracy you’re dealing with. The college authorities probably held a planning meeting to outline and sanction the decision to take action against me, followed by the selection of executives who would take on the practicalities of the operation, keeping the method secret so as to absolve anyone else of guilty knowledge. You know how these people operate.”
“No, I’m afraid I had no idea that douce Cambridge had been invaded by a branch of the Spanish Inquisition.” He managed a polite nod. “I bow to your inside knowledge, which I expect you have already shared with the gentleman of the press.”
Her frown deepened, and he tried not to smile at the increasingly thunderous colours gathering on her face.
“I have. You will read his account on Monday morning. It’s high time for this place and its sheeplike inhabitants to be jerked out of their submissive state. If you can’t find out who nearly killed me, I shall have to rely on Sebastian to do it.”
Redfyre sighed. Time for the scissor kick. “Look again at this tie-back, will you? They’re usually found in twos, I’m sure you’ll have noticed.” She nodded. “I came upon the pair to this one only this morning.” He took a second slender dark-green rope from his other pocket and placed it beside the first. “There. Haberdashery as provided by Messrs. Heals of the Tottenham Court Road, frequently supplied to accompany and restrain swathes of ‘Dreams of the Jungle’ fabric by Voysey. I can vouch for its provenance. The upstairs maid, whose task it is to draw back the bedroom chintz in a certain Cambridge residence, was disconcerted this morning to find that one of the ties was missing. She was even more disconcerted when I took away the second in evidence. But in evidence of quite what, I’m wondering, Miss Proudfoot? Have you any idea?”
He almost rang for the nurse. Juno had turned rigid. Her blackened eye showed up livid against her pale skin as she looked from one length of silk to the other with disbelief, unable to say a word. Alarmed by the change he had brought about, he reached out and seized the hand nearest to him.
“Ouch!” she cried out in pain, shaking him off. “Go away! I’m ringing for Matron! I have nothing more to say to you. Are these the police intimidation methods we’ve all heard about? Earwig told me you’d be sympathetic! She may have known you years ago, but she doesn’t understand you! She called you a gentleman.”
In the face of this noisy bluster and bell-pulling, all Redfyre could do was get to his feet and dash for the door before Matron bore down on him. Ignominiously, he had to retrace his steps to gather up his evidence from the bed before he left, murmuring polite leave-taking phrases. At the door, he steeled himself to turn again and ask hurriedly, “One last thing. How many brothers do you have, Miss Proudfoot?”
Surprise overrode her anger. “Brothers? What are you on about? I have no brothers. No sisters, either. I’m an only child.”
Chapter 11
“Wimmin!” MacFarlane could turn two syllables into a double-barreled explosion of derision. “They certainly have you tied in knots, Redfyre!” Then, relenting, “Still, the threat of Matron chasing you down the corridor would be a stick of ginger up any bloke’s bum. A lesson for you, Sarge. Were you taking note?”
He exchanged a meaning look with Sergeant Thoday, who had joined them in the inspectors’ offices ten minutes earlier, breathless and with his cycle clips still firmly clamped around his trouser legs. Redfyre failed to spot reciprocation of MacFarlane’s scorn on the sergeant’s face, since any emotion was filtered out by the sergeant’s luxuriant moustache, a magnum opus which outdid in size and glossiness Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener’s own. The chap was far too young to be sporting such a growth, Redfyre thought, but he understood that a policeman did whatever he was capable of to assert his authority over a hostile public and was not always aware that he was making himself ridiculous. He wondered what quirk he unconsciously adopted as his own protective measure. His smile! He thought the unemphatic baring of his impeccable teeth was disarming, but also likely recalled a great white shark.
“You were probably wise to scarper, Redfyre,” MacFarlane conceded, “though I’d have liked to hear what she claimed was her relationship—if any—with the Lawrence girl. Which, if you remember, was the main point of your visit. I’m leaving these two files with you, Redfyre. You’re right—there’s a connection. Work the two cases together and put everything else aside until you get to the bottom of it. You need urgently to grab Miss Lawrence’s killer, as she appears to have supplied the means of sending Miss Proudfoot base over apex to her death. What in hell are we looking at? A would-be murderer who becomes a corpse herself, all in the space of an evening?”
“Is there a protocol, sir, for charging a corpse with attempted murder?” Thoday asked innocently.
“Never needed to find out, Sarge. We may have to write it ourselves. I’d like to know what was Miss Lawrence’s grouse against Miss Proudfoot. That business with the curtain tie—I’m not prepared to laugh that off as a bit of female wrist-slapping or hair-tugging. It’s calculated and fatal. Attempted manslaughter at the very least. What sort of belly-aching provokes a performance like that?”
“Someone snatched someone’s boyfriend?” the sergeant offered. “Women’ll put up with all sorts, but if someone nicks their bloke, that’s when they reach for the frying pan.”
Redfyre sought to encourage but gently enlighten the sergeant. “Exactly. Spur of the moment, weapon to hand. But we’re looking at a different scene entirely. ‘Malice aforethought’ sums it up neatly. There’s a brain behind this, one that’s been plotting since . . . Now, when did that first anonymous letter come through? A month ago?”
“That’s no flash in the pan. Or bash with the pan,” MacFarlane finished for him.
“Whatever the relationship—and I have an idea for throwing light on that from a different angle, sir—Miss Lawrence could not possibly have administered the second, backup attempt on Miss Proudfoot’s life,” Redfyre reminded him. “If, indeed, we hear from the laboratory that the inhaler contained more than the advertised sal volatile. She was in the pub, sipping sherry to relieve the tedium of an evening spent in the company of Thomas Tyrrell before, during and subsequent to the time of the fall. The unloved Tyrrell, in fact, makes the very best of alibis, should the corpse find itself in need of one
.”
MacFarlane turned to Sergeant Thoday, who was beginning to stir restively. “Was that your hand up, Thoday? Let’s have your thoughts, then. Are you making any sense of all this?” he asked.
The sergeant was only too pleased to be involved, Redfyre thought, and reminded himself that it had been Thoday on hand last evening, witness of Juno’s heartrending deathbed performance. Like every man who had filed past the recumbent figure, tactfully looking aside at the last moment, he must have been stricken by the sight of such beauty laid low.
“Yes, sir. Seems to me that the business of the curtain tie is an amateurish bit of jiggery-pokery. The sort of trick undergraduates play on each other in their first term up at college. Goes along with apple-pie beds and the bucket of cold water over a doorway. Kid’s stuff, done for a laugh or at worst a snigger. Only noteworthy when it all goes wrong. The inhaler I think will turn out to be just that—an inhaler kindly lent by someone’s granny. We could always try the milliners’ boutiques for … what did you say her hat had on it, sir . . .”
“Holly berries, Sarge.”
“Right.” Thoday sighed and pressed on. “Nothing like the case of the second poor lass, who died a violent and, I think, calculated death. It may have an element of opportunity about it, but—oh, I dunno, I have the feeling there was a sense of serious purpose there. It was never intended to make anybody snigger.” Before MacFarlane’s attention wandered from him, he hurried on. “Besides, sir, I think I’ve found out from Miss Lawrence’s bank a reason why someone might want to top her.”
“Go on, Sarge.”
“It was a hole in one! Her account was at the nearest branch. Midshires in Chesterton High Street. She opened it on her eighteenth birthday with an initial deposit and guarantor documents signed by her father. All shipshape, in Bristol fashion. It’s been meticulously maintained ever since—never in the red, and the manager had no concerns. He examined it with me and, in the light of her suspicious death, looked at it with closer attention than usual. I told him we would need more than a quick glance at the positive sums at the bottom of every page of her statement.”
“Quite right, Sarge. What did he spot?”
“Two things. Her pay, for a start. He knew she was a girl who worked for a living, and assumed that she was employed by her father at his pharmaceutical business, so he rather expected that she wouldn’t exactly be on starvation wages. It’s an accepted way of squeezing as much profit out of a firm as you can and avoiding taxes—pay your offspring for work done at the firm. Lots of people do it. She started out on a good rate for a young girl. More than I earn! And after a month, the weekly rate suddenly shot up. Doubled, in fact. After the third month, it went up again and remained steady. Outgoings were, on the whole, negligible—she was living at home, all expenses found. Her earnings were ‘pin money,’ as the manager called it. Trips to London once a month with associated spending on clothes and shows.”
“How does he know that?”
“Well, he hadn’t clocked it until I started ferreting about and he took a look at the checks she’d paid out. They keep ahold of them for twelve months. Tax returns and such. But the buildup was interesting. The girl was putting in twenty quid a week! And moving fifteen of that sideways into a savings account with a good rate of interest, always calculatedly staying in the black. Twenty quid! That’s four times what an experienced secretary gets in her pay bracket. Now, in my book, there’s only two ways for females to get their hands on cash like that.”
“She was on the game or blackmailing some poor bugger!” MacFarlane muttered.
“Often the two skills go together.” Thoday nodded.
“Come off it!” said Redfyre. “You’re forgetting that the girl was pronounced virgo intacta by Doctor Beaufort.”
“Oh, right. There’s that,” MacFarlane grudgingly agreed. “Doesn’t rule out the blackmail element, though. I’ve known nuns who could extort your last penny with such skill and charm, you’d feel you’d done yourself a favour handing it over. Redfyre, it’s time, I think, someone paid a call on her employer. Established what it was about young Louise that earned her such a generous remuneration. Thoday?”
The sergeant looked up eagerly. “Yes, sir?”
“Good work, lad! Now you can get on with the rest of your tasks. Pick up where you left off on that door to dooring on her route to the place where she died. And have uniform comb the common, just in case. Ground’s frozen, but we might find something.”
“Right, sir. Good thing I didn’t bother to take off my cycle clips, then.”
“Was it something I said?” MacFarlane asked with a shrug when the sergeant had left amid a flurry of pointedly polite salutes and an exquisitely soundless closing of the door behind him.
“He’s keen,” Redfyre said. “And able. I rather think he was hoping to be given the chance of grilling Miss Lawrence’s employer himself.”
“Horses for courses. He’s a good lad—grammar school boy, and bright with it—but he’s young and homegrown. The owner of a thriving Cambridge business is likely to be either well-off or well-connected, probably both.” He riffled through his notes. “You’ll find him at Number 1, Midsummer Place. Very smart. He lives above the shop, so to speak. Discreet offices in the basement, apartment on the floors above. Very continental! Hmm . . . Well, after him, lad! Now! Ditch the bike and take the Riley. You can’t arrive there in cycle clips and balaclava; he’ll think you’ve come to rob him. Go in and disarm him with your posh accent, then finish him off with your fox’s cunning. A chap who’ll pay out eighty quid a month to some young chancer he’s not even having it off with has something deeply dodgy to hide!”
“After him, now!” had been MacFarlane’s command. To Midsummer Place. Redfyre always questioned orders—frequently, he disobeyed them. He looked at his watch and saw that it was one o’clock, a businessman’s lunchtime. Policemen had no such perks. He grimaced and came to a decision. He snatched up the keys to the Riley, rejoiced that it started when asked, and set off in the opposite direction, heading south once again down Trumpington Street.
“Inspector Redfyre! Back again so soon? I’m terribly sorry, but you’ve missed her. Miss Proudfoot left an hour ago. You did give us permission to return her suitcase to her, yes? Did I misunderstand the instructions?”
He reassured the sister that all was well, though he had carelessly left his notebook in the ward and would like to dash up there to retrieve it.
“Then you’d better hurry,” the sister said. “The staff will be setting about the room with mops and buckets and fresh linen.”
“Of course,” he said easily. “If I’m lucky, they may already have laid hands on my book. Oh, the flowers, Sister? Wonderful showing! Did Miss Proudfoot make arrangements for them to be given away? Far too good to be put in the bin, I’d have thought!”
The sister smiled indulgently to hear his concern. “They wouldn’t have been wasted. We would have given them across the road to decorate Little St. Mary’s, or to the orphanage. Miss Proudfoot could hardly take them with her—she had her hands full with her suitcase and hatbox, and was intending—against all our advice—to jump aboard the twelve o’clock bus to Melford. The bus! In her condition! Of course, we couldn’t allow it.” She leaned forward and confided, “We had to do a certain amount of bargaining with her! Matron agreed to allow her to sign herself out on condition that she accepted the offer of a taxi to take her to her destination. It was either that or an ambulance. Matron was implacable. The taxi was already paid for, if that was a concern—one of Miss Stretton’s insistences. She agreed to the taxi. But she was in such a hurry to be off, I think she’d quite forgotten about the flowers. When I asked her what she wanted done with them as she climbed in, she was quite flummoxed. She asked me to put them in a box and send them on.” Sister exchanged an indulgent shake of the head with Redfyre. “We’re at a bit of a loss as to how to get them to her. Flow
ers are not the easiest things to pack.”
“Let me solve your problem,” Redfyre said. “I have the Riley outside, and I’m motoring out to Melford to pay a call on Miss Earwig Stretton this afternoon. Why don’t you have the flowers collected up and put onto the back seat of my car, and I will ensure that they get there safely?”
He hurried upstairs to carry out the inspection he’d been unable to do that morning. The room had not yet been entered for cleaning purposes, but he could hear the clank of approaching buckets in the distance and went swiftly about his business. When he saw that the notes were still attached to the offerings, he breathed a sigh of relief and began to read them, starting with one that accompanied a flamboyant bouquet of red roses.
Darling! So brave! Ease your poor eyes by looking on these.
I stole them from Daddy’s greenhouse.
We always have red roses brought on (or is it held back?) for Christmas.
What a joy! Come to us the moment you feel strong enough!
Earwig hadn’t needed to sign it.
A dozen statuesque white lilies were next in line.
My dear! I so enjoyed your concert last evening and was devastated to witness your fall. If there is anything I can do . . .
I left my number at the reception desk.
Your devoted servant and admirer,
Colonel Sir Reynold Brandon
God! The stage-door Johnnies were everywhere! Bloody old Brandon! Redfyre remembered they’d kept a file on him at HQ. And classical music did not feature amongst the many esoteric enthusiasms of the ghastly old pig-sticker.
He recognised his own Aunt Henrietta’s copperplate hand next to a starkly elegant green and white bunch of hellebores from her own garden, whimsically fastened together with a twist of raffia.
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