The guest house was proving well run. Tonight there were half a dozen people staying despite the fact the season was spent. The fire crackled encouragingly as Mirabelle introduced herself and managed not to explain why she was lodged here or, for that matter, the reason she was wearing a navy woollen day dress in the evening. Most people seemed to be in Brighton for a few days on holiday. In the main they chatted about the sights. When the gong sounded, everyone moved through to the dining room and took their places at separate tables. Miss Brownlee had placed Mirabelle in the bay, overlooking the street, and she felt suddenly uncomfortable as she sat alone. The feeling dissolved into relief just as service commenced, when McGregor arrived, removing his coat and hat as he came through the door. Mirabelle grinned gratefully as he slipped on to the seat opposite her. There was a ripple of interest as the other guests wondered or perhaps assumed that Mirabelle was married to this competent-looking man. Certainly Mirabelle thought she could sense a change in the way they were regarding her – a woman on her own, after all, was a vulnerable creature and much to be pitied.
She suddenly became aware that she and McGregor could be overheard, although, luckily, the closest table was occupied by a mother and her daughter who were talking in high spirits about a walk they had taken along the seafront, which had culminated in a trip to the aquarium. ‘Tomorrow,’ the girl enthused, ‘we must get over to Hastings and see the site of the battle.’ She pulled a guidebook from her bag and read out the entry for Battle Abbey.
‘It fits. Looks nice,’ McGregor commented with a nod at Mirabelle’s outfit.
‘Thank you. I don’t quite know what I would have done . . .’ Her voice trailed. ‘It’s very kind of you.’
‘You’d have organised yourself, I imagine.’
‘Vesta’s doing a good job of that.’
‘How are you feeling?’
Mirabelle did not reply immediately, as Miss Brownlee appeared at her elbow holding two plates of soup, which she set down carefully. Surprisingly, it smelled delicious.
‘Mushroom,’ Miss Brownlee announced and turned to serve the other tables.
‘I feel better than I did,’ Mirabelle confided as she leaned in. ‘Though it’s awful about Mr Beaumont. I keep coming back to it. Poor man.’
McGregor nodded. ‘I broke the news to his father this morning. I thought, as he’s a Member of Parliament and I’m the senior officer, I ought to be the one to do it. I attended, after all. The boy was an only son – there’s a daughter but, well, that’ll be the end of the family name. He took it quite well all things considered. We’ll release the body later this week.’
McGregor paused and the conversation halted at this impasse. Many churches refused to bury someone who had killed themselves. Mirabelle felt a rush of sympathy. It must seem like insult on top of injury for Dougie Beaumont’s family and then there was the shame – everyone would know what he had done. Everyone would wonder why.
‘Was there a note?’ she enquired.
McGregor shook his head. ‘Not that we can find. Of course the fire may have done for it. The scene is a mess.’
‘Yes. I was there today.’ Mirabelle lifted her spoon and took a sip. Miss Brownlee had evidently used a good deal of butter and the soup was delicious. A serene look passed across her face.
‘It’s a crime scene, Mirabelle. What were you doing there?’
Mirabelle felt herself prickle at McGregor’s tone. This was quickly followed by a stab of guilt. The superintendent, after all, was her saviour. She ticked herself off for feeling inappropriately independent not to mention ungrateful for his help, and told herself that the least she could do was answer his question.
‘I went to have a look at my flat. Vesta was making an inventory of the damage. I know it’s ghoulish but I went upstairs.‘
‘When?’
‘It was late morning. Perhaps eleven or so.’
‘Did you move anything?’
‘I picked up a couple of photographs from the floor and put them back on the mantelpiece,’ she said slowly, deciding not to tell the superintendent about Mr Highton. He was exercised enough as it was. ‘I wasn’t aware, that is to say I didn’t think . . .’
‘I don’t mean in the drawing room – I mean in the bedroom. Did you move anything in the bedroom?’
‘The bedroom?’
‘Yes. Did you touch anything? Take anything away?’
Mirabelle shook her head. ‘Of course not. I didn’t even go into the bedroom,’ she said. ‘Why?’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘You can’t get away with that, Alan McGregor!’
McGregor picked at his bread roll before he relented. ‘There was a drawer. An empty drawer. It was left open.’
‘Mr Beaumont was a bachelor, I believe.’
I know. Bachelors are hardly tidy. And the flat is in chaos anyway with the fire and then the brigade picking it through. But it makes no sense. It’s the top drawer beside the man’s bed, you see. The drawers below it are filled with bits and pieces – it just seems odd that the top one is empty and left open too. It’s the only thing that isn’t quite right. At first I thought Beaumont must have taken out whatever was in there before he, you know, did it. Perhaps he’d been planning to kill himself for a while. Perhaps that’s where he kept the rope. But then, checking against the other drawers – the amount of grit and dust and so forth. The water from the hose. Well, I don’t think it was open during the fire. It was dry inside and if it had been open when the fire brigade went in, it’s unlikely it would have stayed that way when everything else was soaked. I think someone took whatever was in the drawer, and left it open. After the fire. After it was all over, I mean.’
Mirabelle bit her lip.
‘The firemen – well, now and then, you get a bad one,’ McGregor reasoned. ‘Sometimes it’s too much temptation. He could have kept anything in there. I’m making discreet inquiries . . .’
Mirabelle recalled George Highton’s inability to meet her eye when he first emerged from his friend’s bedroom. Perhaps his shifty expression wasn’t the result of grief. Perhaps Highton was guilty of removing something from the scene?
‘Will there be a funeral? I mean, does anyone know yet where the poor man might be buried?’ she asked.
McGregor shook his head. ‘The body will be released after the post-mortem. It’s up to the family to make the arrangements.’
‘That day we saw him – well, he was a talented driver, wasn’t he? You don’t get to that level without having a good amount of nerve, I imagine. It doesn’t make sense.’
McGregor dipped a piece of bread into his soup. ‘You mean, if he was so brave what was he doing killing himself?’
‘No. I mean if he was so brave what was it that drove him to do it? That’s a different question. A more pragmatic one. Poor fellow.’
McGregor grinned. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘I know that look. You leave this to me, Mirabelle Bevan. You have more than enough on your plate.’
Mirabelle directed her attention back to the soup. The superintendent had a point, but still, poor Mr Beaumont had been a neighbour. And then there was the look on his face as he swung his mother around the day he’d won the race. Once more she considered telling him about George Highton and once more she dismissed the notion and instead decided to change the subject.
‘Miss Brownlee tells me you bought this place.’
McGregor smacked his lips as he scooped the last mushroomy smear into his mouth.
‘Yes. Alfie Brownlee won’t be coming out. I’m sure Betty told you that as well. I was renting a room further up in Kemptown. It was fish and chips most nights. I’ve never been good at doing for myself and I always meant to buy somewhere and settle down. I had some savings and a bit of money I inherited. It seemed like a good arrangement. She’s a nice lady.’
‘It’s a nice house.’
‘I took the best room, on the first floor. It was the old drawing room – like in your flat, but not so grand. There’s
plenty of space so I can read beside the fire if I happen to be in. And Betty’s a good cook, don’t you think?’
Mirabelle nodded. She had never thought of the superintendent as much of a reader or for that matter much of a gourmet. To say nothing of him being a proprietor. Her surprise must have shown.
‘It’s mostly case files that I read,’ he admitted. ‘And the newspaper. But the library is just down the road. I like George Orwell, believe it or not.’
‘That’s revolutionary.’ Mirabelle smiled.
‘We Scots are revolutionary’
‘I thought that was the Irish.’
‘James Joyce . . .’ McGregor paused as Miss Brownlee removed his plate. ‘I don’t understand a word. It just goes on and on.’
‘And you don’t mind the guests being here?’ Mirabelle kept her voice low. ‘I mean, they seem perfectly nice.’
‘I don’t mind it at all – there’s company if I want it. I don’t have to join in. And the place turns a tidy profit.’ McGregor’s eyes danced. ‘I’m not so revolutionary that I object to that.’
After a creditable chicken stew and a warm slice of treacle tart with a dollop of thick cream, they decided to take a walk along the promenade rather than retire to the residents’ lounge for coffee. The evenings were drawing in now the summer was spent. Mirabelle slipped her arm through the superintendent’s and they fell into step along the front.
‘Vesta arranged insurance,’ she said. ‘The flat is covered – she’s going to organise the whole renovation. It needs to be completely cleaned and refitted.’
‘She’s a wonder.’
‘I don’t know how long it will take.’
‘You’re welcome at the guest house for as long as you like. I owe you my life, remember?’
Mirabelle shrugged off the comment. She’d rescued McGregor and Vesta when they’d been kidnapped a couple of years ago not half a mile from here. But then McGregor had risked his life for her in Paris the year before. She didn’t want to think about that now.
‘It’s a lovely evening,’ she said.
Beyond the pier the front stretched for miles. As the sky darkened, the sea became enticingly blank. Tonight there was a breeze rolling off it that was bracing but not unpleasant. She could hear the tide breaking on the pebbles, the soothing swish as they shifted. The deep cold of winter had yet to descend, the chill evening air only a warning of what was to come. A scratch of dead leaves skittered along the pavement and caught against a gatepost.
‘We could pop into the Cricketers,’ McGregor suggested.
When Mirabelle didn’t reply he stopped, took her in his arms and kissed her. He tasted of treacle tart still – sweet and insistent. She kissed him back.
‘I don’t want to push you,’ he said. ‘We’re living under the same roof. It seems as if I have the advantage. You’ve had a terrible shock.’
Mirabelle’s expression was quizzical. ‘The advantage? We know each other too well for that.’
Some people might have found it risqué to share lodgings, but, Mirabelle thought, Vesta and Charlie had shared digs on a far more intimate basis than she planned to with McGregor. And now Vesta and Charlie were happily married – very happily indeed. It was difficult to think of McGregor in those terms, and yet there was no question that as time passed Mirabelle found the superintendent increasingly attractive. He hadn’t pulled away, his strong hands holding her firmly. She leaned backwards, hinging his grasp on the curve of her back and letting him support her. But somehow she couldn’t settle to the idea. Not entirely.
‘Perhaps a gin and tonic would be nice,’ she said, standing upright and smoothing the collar of her coat.
McGregor put his arm around her shoulder as they turned away from the sea and she moved fractionally closer. She told herself it was for warmth, but that wasn’t entirely true. Away from the swish of the waves on the pebbles, their steps sounded different today. Usually the percussive beat of her stride on the paving stones sounded a staccato tattoo against McGregor’s steady rhythm but in flat heels Mirabelle moved almost silently as if she wasn’t even there.
‘Charlie is playing this evening,’ McGregor said absentmindedly. ‘There’ll be jazz.’
Jazz or no jazz, Mirabelle thought, the Cricketers was bound to prove a distraction. But then thinking of it that way was odd in itself, as if she didn’t want to recognise her relationship with McGregor or consider poor dead Dougie Beaumont. She kept seeing the image of the poor boy’s body on the stretcher in the dark, or worse, imagining him hanging from the brass chandelier beside the wrought-iron fireplace. It was disconcerting. Somehow he hadn’t gone. It was as if his ghost was needling her from the fringes.
‘Do you know how the fire started?’ she asked.
‘I’ll speak to the pathologist tomorrow but it looks as if when Beaumont did it, he kicked off from a stool that toppled into the grate. The fire set it alight and that ignited the whole room. He wouldn’t have known a thing.’
‘Yes, I thought that,’ she said.
Mirabelle wondered if Dougie Beaumont had newspapers or books around his favourite chair. If he had they would have fed the blaze. It would have been easy enough for the fire to spread.
‘It’s not that I’m responsible,’ she tried to explain as McGregor held open the pub door and she swept inside to the warmth and the music, ‘but I still feel awful. I mean, at least I ought to have known the poor chap was there.’
Chapter 5
The first and simplest emotion is curiosity
Mirabelle paused with a pencil in her hand as she perused the London telephone directory the following morning in the office. She and McGregor had stayed in the Cricketers for more than an hour. Charlie had played the drums like George Wettling at McGregor’s special request and now she beat the rhythm on to the page with the end of her pencil as the image of her and McGregor dancing flickered across her memory. The beat just wouldn’t go away. Really, she scolded herself, she ought to get on. Bill had already left the office for the day and Vesta was detailing her proposed renovations on Mirabelle’s flat. The assessor was due to arrive shortly and the girl was determined to be prepared. She had typed her lists in triplicate and now she was marking the margins with potential workmen to undertake each task, each trade allotted a differently coloured pencil.
With only a glance to ensure the girl was fully occupied, Mirabelle abandoned the beat and instead slid her finger down the page until she came to the entry for Elrick Beaumont MP. It seemed Mr Beaumont lived just off Sloane Square. Mirabelle paused. Elrick Beaumont represented a Brighton constituency but this address would be handy for Westminster, she supposed.
The sky was grey this morning and it threatened rain. Mirabelle stared out of the window and wondered what a bachelor might keep in his top drawer.
‘What does Charlie keep in his bedside cabinet?’ she asked Vesta. ‘Top drawer.’
Vesta looked up. ‘What?’
‘Charlie? What does he keep in his top drawer?’
Vesta perused the office while she thought about it. Generally when Mirabelle asked a strange question it was because she had read something mysterious in the newspaper or come across an unexpected piece of correspondence. Today, however, the newspaper was folded tidily on Bill’s desk and Mirabelle appeared to be looking at an entry in the London telephone directory.
‘The top drawer of his bedside cabinet is socks,’ she said, her head to one side as she tried to decide if Mirabelle looked satisfied with this answer. She did not. Mirabelle found herself wondering what McGregor kept in his drawers. When they got back to the Arundel from the Cricketers she had kissed the superintendent as they stood on the first-floor landing, the doors to their rooms opposite each other, both resolutely closed. She had felt drawn in two directions at once and evidently so had McGregor. They hovered as if held in mid-air by some kind of magnetic force and in the end it was he who had backed away as if he was forcing himself, his hands held palms upwards in an informal surrender. W
hen his bedroom door clicked shut, Mirabelle had found herself wondering if going to bed with Alan McGregor might be like it had been with Jack. But how could it be? That the question had occurred was most disconcerting.
‘This is the dead fella, isn’t it?’ Vesta said. ‘It’s his drawers.’
Mirabelle nodded. ‘Someone appears to have removed the contents of his top drawer. After the fire.’
‘Maybe a diary?’ Vesta tried. ‘Or some cash?’
‘Maybe.’
‘But not the telephone directory . . .’
‘He wasn’t in the telephone directory.’ Mirabelle bounced her pencil off the page. ‘He only moved in a few weeks ago. This entry is for his family up in town. I can’t imagine how they must be feeling today.’
Vesta stood up and stretched. She wandered over to the hooks by the door and removed Mirabelle’s green tweed coat. ‘Go on,’ she said, her tone businesslike. ‘They’re listed so you know where they live.’
Mirabelle got to her feet and Vesta held out the coat. It was only good manners to offer her condolences, she thought as she slid her arms into the sleeves.
‘Charlie had heard of him, you know,’ Vesta said.
‘The father?’
‘No. The dead bloke. The driver. Boys and their toys. Charlie learned to drive during the war. The Yanks had food-supply trucks so he got a licence on one of those – a great big lumbering thing. He likes an engine. Not that we’ll ever have a car, I expect. Certainly not a racing car. I always fancied myself in a Ford convertible with the roof down – if we ever get a sunny day. Racing down a country road in a Deluxe or maybe a Ferrari 166. That’s glamour.’
‘Thanks,’ Mirabelle said, laying a hand on Vesta’s arm gratefully. ‘If I rush I’ll catch the next train.’
Vesta stepped back. She knew from experience that Mirabelle sometimes just needed to get away. She’d had a shock, after all. She might have died. ‘Leave all this to me,’ she said and opened the door so that Mirabelle could sweep through.
Operation Goodwood Page 4