HALF AN HOUR later Grace Aldred was safely—and happily—stowed away with Adam’s sister. Rather than make the journey back to town and into a family situation Grace had just left, a stay with her old friend Annie was much to be preferred.
Having gone without the ‘light collation’ on offer for lunch at the Hall, Joe had wolfed down a piece of fruit cake and a mug of tea at Hunnyton’s cottage. Grace had accepted a biscuit, listening nervously as the two men spoke to each other in short sharp phrases, looking constantly at their watches, calculating times and distances and making plans. Grace, while not managing to follow much of the professional-sounding conversation, seemed to sense that everything stemmed from the action she had taken on that ghastly April morning and she twitched with feelings of guilt and foreboding. It was not over yet and someone was for the high jump. But these two men who spoke over her head in soldiers’ voices seemed to have her welfare at heart and they assured her it would all soon be dealt with and she wasn’t to worry. Joe had seen her safely off to Annie’s house in the company of the superintendent, whom she seemed shyly to adore.
Joe strolled into the hall and greeted Styles with the self-satisfaction of a man just returned from a post-luncheon constitutional. He walked swiftly about the corridors for a while, smilingly avoiding conversation with anyone and finally headed for the telephone room. He emerged after a few minutes, leaving the door open and calling for the butler. “Ah, Styles! There you are. Sorry, I seem to be treading on your toes today … I was in there talking to the Yard. The phone rang as I put the receiver down. Thought it must be my superintendent with an afterthought but no—it was for you. The Aldred household ringing from Bury, courtesy of the grocer. A three-penny bit to hand and time of the essence so I took a message.” Joe’s eyes went slightly out of focus as he recalled a piece of lightweight information. “Grace’s mother’s taken a turn for the worse. Heart trouble. Grace won’t be back until Wednesday at the earliest. Apologies and all that. Oh, and would you please tell Mrs. Bolton she’s sorry about the … gophering? I say—does that make sense?”
Styles smiled. “Perfect sense, sir. Mrs. Bolton will be relieved to hear there’s been a communication. Tea has been cleared, I’m afraid, sir. Shall I summon up another pot? No? The dressing gong will sound at seven for dinner at eight.”
“Thank you, Styles. I shall be on parade at eight.”
BEFORE THE GONG sounded he would set in motion the plans he’d made with Hunnyton, and he’d start in the kitchen. He looked at his watch. The lull between tea and drinks. This was the right time to catch Ben and Mrs. Bolton and explain what he wanted from them.
Two hours to go before he could disappear to his room and be certain he would not be disturbed. At seven he would go up and do his packing, preparing for a quick exit. Lagonda back to Cambridge and then whatever train was available to get him back to reeky old London. He could be back at his desk by midmorning on Monday, checking one last time the wording of the resignation that he kept permanently in his drawer undated and ready to be delivered to the chief commissioner. He could be taking one last look at the plane trees lining the Thames Embankment. Like them, he’d absorbed year on year the contamination of his surroundings and finally, in a moment of release, he’d throw off the whole layering of filth to reveal the pristine white trunk beneath. If his core did indeed remain unsullied. He couldn’t be certain that the rot hadn’t begun to penetrate.
In an odd mood of self-doubt and nostalgia, spiked by an edge of excitement and anticipation of change, he first made his way to the Great Hall. He passed the crowd of disapproving ancestors in review one by one, countering their superior stares with his own knowledgeable gaze. He moved on down the corridor to the dining hall, where he annoyed a couple of footmen who were putting the finishing touches to the dinner table by taking up space in front of the Canaletto landscape of the Thames. Saying a quiet farewell? There hadn’t been much he’d enjoyed at Melsett but he’d been glad to see this.
The enchantment was broken by a confident voice at his elbow. A low and intimate voice that sent a shiver down his side. “So here it is! I’d never seen one of his views of London before. It’s superb, of course. Though I have to say, once one has seen any of his sunlit pictures of Venice, the contrast with a grey northern cityscape is striking but unwelcome. The dome of St. Paul’s seems reduced, the architecture uninviting, the water murky, don’t you think?”
The voice was accompanied by a trace of perfume matching in its sophistication. Cuir de Russie? Masculine tones of birch and amber were sharpened by a top note of jasmine. It spoke to Joe of Paris, of leather jewel cases spilling over with diamonds, tickets for the Opéra and champagne. He’d last encountered it in the plush, enclosed comfort of a first class sleeping carriage on the Train Bleu heading south. The women who wore it gave and expected no quarter. They relished an armed flirtation and they knew how to deal with irony.
“If the subject is dear to one’s heart and the artistry sublime, I claim no disappointment, Miss Despond. If I had the resources to buy it, I would think I’d died and gone to heaven.”
“Call me Dorothy. I remember that you’re Joe. Anyway, Joe, I don’t think it’s for sale so we both have to put heaven on hold.”
Joe had the clear impression she was trying to provoke him.
“There are others perhaps more attainable … Did the Stubbs take your fancy? The Gainsborough? Cecily Lady Truelove is, as we speak, locking up her Lancret, secreting her Seurat, I believe.”
He meant it to sting and, hearing her sharp intake of breath, he guessed he’d been successful. She disengaged with a fencer’s flourish and stepped between him and the painting. Her eyes locked on his in disdain. “What are you? Cecily Truelove’s guard-dog? You are very rude, even for a policeman!”
“I apologise. I acknowledge that the goods you deal in are vastly more expensive than a pound of pippins. The last thing I’d want to do is ruin Truelove’s chances of selling off his birthright. Suffering from straightened financial circumstances, as he is at the moment, he may be minded to do just that.”
She had not known.
The pallor of her face, the long silence before she replied told Joe all he wanted to know. Was he being an utter cad, revealing Truelove’s position? Yes, he was. He could make out a case with no difficulty. It was a caddish thing to do and far outside his usual meticulous manners. But the rebellious streak in Joe took up arms alongside his unfashionable belief in the rights of women to live their lives with the freedom accorded their male counterparts. The men in Truelove’s world could learn of his imminent destitution by the simple exchange of information from one deeply buttoned arm chair to the next in a St. James’s club, between the rows of leather-covered benches in the Houses of Parliament, between shots on the grouse moor. Who would whisper a lifesaving truth in Dorothy’s ear? No one. She and her father were not on the circulation list when it came to scurrilous confidences, distanced from the English establishment as they were by class and nationality. Even set apart by their wealth, which brought with it a certain mistrust and, in these hard times, envy. If Joe slipped away into the dark now and left this girl, however worldly and uncongenial, to be hoodwinked by Truelove, he would hold himself guilty of neglect of duty for ever more.
At last, Joe had chosen to pick up the gauntlet thrown down at his feet some time ago. A l’outrance, Truelove! To the end, however bitter!
“What are you trying to say?” she asked.
“That Lavinia Truelove, who largely—and generously—financed her husband’s activities during their married life, died having almost exhausted her resources. James may have been her sole heir but he inherited no more than the few thousand that remained of the marriage settlement with which to run his estate and his academic and altruistic concerns.” He kept his voice level, the tone that of a trusted family lawyer. “A Lavinia remaining alive might well have been able to intercede with her father on her husband’s behalf when the bottom was reached, but with her dea
th in questionable circumstances being whispered about on all sides, it’s unlikely that he would find himself able to help a man suspected of killing his daughter. The pay of a government minister will hardly maintain a staff of five in Town, let alone the fifty he presently employs in the country. You will be aware of the present straightened circumstances of the English landowner, indeed, the whole nation? James Truelove, I think, will have calculated to the nearest thousand what he can get for his Canaletto and all the other glories. I suggest that if you have an interest, you seek out the man himself and verify what I have just told you. If I correctly understand your circumstances, the truth ought not to be kept from you.”
He would have sworn she hadn’t known about Truelove’s dire financial circumstances and he thought, from her silence, that she was in confused retreat but her answer, when it came, parried his attack. It was delivered with a growing assurance, even scorn. “Oh, old news! Yes, you’re right. James is contemplating auctioning off one or two of his paintings, but we’re hardly talking of a closing-down sale. He’ll be buying others to replace them. More modern in taste maybe. Pictures degenerate. They have to be moved on before they near the end of their useful existence. Before boredom and decay set in. I would certainly advise James to dispose of this Canaletto. It’s of England but it’s not English. It’s … displaced. Rootless. A refugee. Like me,” she added, revealing an unexpected crack in her confidence. “Maybe you’d like to buy it? You don’t seem to be a friend of his, but he could probably let you have it for … ten thousand pounds. Do you have ten thousand pounds, Commissioner?”
“If I had cash to spare I’d spend it on a Whistler,” he said blandly. “Tell me, now you’ve done your audit—how do you value the ancestors in the Great Hall? There are some impressive signatures on those canvasses.”
At last a feeling look and a half smile. “No idea. I’ve looked, of course. But I’m not very keen on selling off … people. One’s own people. I have no ancestors I can name, let alone look at. My father doesn’t even remember who his grandparents were. I feel the lack of background acutely. At home, I drink cocktails with men whose people crossed the ocean aboard the Mayflower; here, I take tea with the bony descendants of the Norman Conqueror. I expect you know—we are …” She reached for a word and came up with two—both of them French. “Parvenus … arrivistes … Why does it sound so much less insulting to confess it in French?”
He realised she was waiting for a response. An acknowledgement that she had just surrendered more than a confidence: an advantage. “I can’t for the moment come up with an English word for what you’re describing, Miss Despond. ‘Johnny-Come-Lately’ doesn’t quite do it—he’s a character from a nursery rhyme, surely? Perhaps that tells you something of our national character. We have always accepted that talent, wherever it has its roots, will transplant and flourish in our soil.” He added, teasingly, “Handel … Disraeli … our Royal family … and, yes, Canaletto, for starters.”
She listened patiently to his burbling, still getting his measure, he thought.
“But surely there were painters in your homeland? Hungary, it’s rumoured. Somewhere in eastern Europe?”
“Refugees travel light, Commissioner. If I had portraits of my ancestors I would never sell them. It smacks of the slave market. Oh, I know that they are no more than dabs of oil on canvas but I can’t bear to see faces and figures that must once have been dear to someone coming under the hammer. Being valued by the likes of Clarence Audley, ogled in the sale-room by any rag-tag-and-bobtail.” Her sneer made it clear that he answered this description.
“Were you aware that two miniatures of Truelove’s came up at Christie’s this week? Ancestors who disappeared from the house nearly thirty years ago?”
“Yes. It was I who drew Papa’s attention to them. I research the catalogues for him. He decided to buy them and present them to James as a token of our esteem this weekend.”
“A delicate gesture. A ‘sweetener,’ as it’s called in the trade.”
The half smile became a full one. “He was thwarted on the day by a low-down trick—a ‘spoiler,’ as it’s called in the trade. Performed by yourself, I believe?”
“I was, indeed, the bobtail in question.”
She appeared to relent slightly. “Anyway, no more of James’s pictures will suffer that ignominy. It was wrong of me to dangle the Canaletto in front of your nose. There are more ways than one, Commissioner, of righting a listing ship and getting it safely to harbour.”
The implication was unmistakable. Joe sighed. How could clever girls like Dorcas and Dorothy be so taken in? Why would they refuse to see the truth when it was spelled out to them?
“Shovel on fresh cargo? Or jettison the existing load? Both?”
“You’ll have to wait and see, won’t you, Commissioner?” She left him with a smile he could have sworn she’d learned from Leonardo.
He could almost bring himself to feel sorry for Truelove. This girl was no Lavinia. She had in seconds taken aboard news any other girl would have found devastating, evaluated it, made her calculations, and come to a decision. She intended to go ahead with her plans to marry a future prime minister, acquire a readymade set of ancestors and a country estate. Cecily might even be allowed to keep her Lancret. In spite of her undisguised contempt for him, Joe admitted to himself that he admired Dorothy Despond. Beauty, a quick wit and a buccaneering attitude were a combination which always seduced him. Altogether Truelove could congratulate himself on a match made in heaven. On the debit side, Joe could not count on an invitation to the wedding. And Dorcas? She could count on heartache at best.
The forces were gathering fast, the noose tightening, he realised, now that so much else was clear to him. Dorcas had been chosen as the victim, just as he had originally suspected. She had been lured into making a second appearance at the Hall and the way had been prepared for some sort of grisly unmasking. The deranged student in love with her mentor: it was a familiar story that would slip down with a knowing chuckle in the clubs of St. James’s. Wasn’t the girl in question a Joliffe, after all? That rackety family so discredited by the behaviour and dubious death of this girl’s aunt a year or two back? The Wren at the Ritz case? James should have known better than to encourage such a fragile personality. Still, that was the Trueloves for you—all heart and philanthropy. Too good for their own good—what!
There were factors in this affair that would have convinced any Scotland Yard officer of Dorcas’s guilt. With a chill, he calculated that Truelove, familiar with Joe’s relationship with the girl, must have been aware of Joe’s knowledge of her skills and of her character. He was well placed to know that she had the capacity to commit such a crime. It had certainly crossed his mind, he recalled with a flush of embarrassment. But, because of this very association, Joe was less likely than anyone to charge her with murder and haul her off to the Old Bailey for public trial.
“This could surely all be resolved within the family, so to speak?” Joe could almost hear the suggestion being put to him. Slyly and with bluff bonhomie. “Come on, man! No need for uncomfortable denunciations, prison sentences and the rest of it!” Nothing that would weigh heavily on the Truelove conscience. Nothing that would spoil the Truelove reputation for public service and philanthropy. No need either for a black cloud of suspicion to smudge the horizon of Truelove’s romantic prospects, which seemed to be brightening briskly from the west. And all this convenience came with the bonus of a grateful assistant commissioner of police firmly in the politician’s pocket and in his power.
Joe had made his plans. He’d done his best to protect Dorothy. He had now to concentrate on saving Dorcas from herself. Dorcas might be lost to him, but she was not going to be lost to the world. One last flap of his wings was called for.
The seven o’clock gong sounded. Time for the last act.
THE WHOLE COMPANY dazzled. Assembled in the Great Hall, champagne glasses in hand, they chattered and laughed. Diamonds winked, pearls glowed,
rich colours and fabrics shone out against the sober background of the men’s evening dress. The ancestors, ranged up around them seemed at last to approve. The only cloud on the horizon was the face of Cecily, who was advancing towards him.
“We are now thirteen!” she said. “Well, twelve and a half if you count Miss Joliffe. She hardly considers herself one of the party, I think.” Cecily nodded in the direction of Dorcas who was lurking moodily on the fringes of a group, preferring to stare at the pictures rather than join in the conversation. “Joe, are you quite sure you delivered my message to Miss Hartest? She certainly did not have the civility to send me reply and reassurance.”
“Half past seven for eight. It’s not yet eight. I sent the chauffeur down at seven thirty. I’m sure …”
At that moment Styles appeared at the door, raising his eyebrows for attention.
“Oh, it seems you’re right, Joe. Look at Styles. Something’s exciting him. Let’s hope it’s Adelaide.”
She went over to the door and the butler announced, “Miss Hartest, your ladyship.”
Adelaide came in with all the aplomb of Cleopatra entering Rome in the sure and secret knowledge that its mighty ruler had been in her bed the night before. Conversations were put on instant hold as everyone turned to stare. Joe gulped. One of the women gasped. It was Alexander who reacted. He dashed over to ease his mother out of the way and welcome the last guest. Joe heard his voice, animated and friendly: “Adelaide! Alex Truelove—we met at the Church Mothers’ Waste-Not-Want-Not sale three weeks ago. You helped me decide between the knitted cat and the stuffed owl.”
“I remember. And is he giving satisfaction, your choice?”
“I’ll say! I put Olly up for target practice in the orchard. So poor is my aim these days, so jittery my fingers, I have to report he’s still intact. Not a feather out of place! Adelaide, you’re looking quite splendid! For a moment I thought myself back at the Palace. Come and meet another Londoner. Joe Sandilands is about the place somewhere …”
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