Angels Dining at the Ritz

by John Gardner

  ‘On the road to Mandalay,’ he half sang, stopped eating for a moment.

  ‘Rude to sing at the table, Tommy. And, no, Manderley. It’s called Manderley. Not Mandalay. Beautiful house with a sinister housekeeper…’

  ‘Like Mrs Goode then.’

  Tommy was trying too hard. ‘No, she’s called Mrs Danvers.’

  ‘It’s a creepy sort of book then. Like the place those nuns have near Thun.’

  Suzie thought for a moment. ‘Yes, but it’s not just a kind of romance with a dash of Gothic darkness. Somehow there’s more to it than that.’

  But Tommy had given up, distracted again, troubled. She thought, he’s searching for answers. She knew Tommy Livermore when he was really what he called ‘into a case’: seen him like it before many times — distracted, buried in it, his mind crawling around all the possibilities, taking mental measurements and bearings, pulling people into his head, examining them, then either dismissing them or putting them under the microscope of his brain. Most murders, he taught her, were committed by someone close to the victim. Often another family member, unless the killing had been some aberrancy — like this one — the work of a mentally disturbed person with bizarre, abnormal tastes. Someone like Golly Goldfinch: and at that her tummy turned over. For a second she saw the obnoxious Golly with his slanted grin, so suddenly real that she could have sworn for a wink of time he was here, with them in the hotel’s dining room, very close.

  ‘You all right, heart?’ Tommy, glancing up and catching her, swaying in her seat, eyes unfocused, touched by terror.

  ‘Yes. Yes. Just for a minute…’ She was sweating and didn’t even try to put the feeling into words because she thought it would sound silly.

  ‘You sure, heart? For a minute you looked like you’d seen a ghost.’

  ‘Perhaps I did.’

  ‘What, on the road to Mandalay again? Too much reading, heart. Active imagination. Sends you Harpic, right round the bend.’

  When they got to King’s Lynn Police Station they were taken straight through to Detective Chief Inspector Tait’s office, corner of the building just off the main CID room: a correct uniformed WPC showed them in, intoning their names just in case Tait had forgotten them. Tait ran a tight ship.

  The Detective Chief Inspector himself stood behind his desk, in front of a large window: light directly behind him, so that Suzie immediately thought of a kind of cartoon crow, larger than life, silhouetted black, his head turning and the beak of his nose prominent, a great aquiline creature, predatory and ready to sink claws into any smaller animal that came into his sights. For a moment or two Suzie felt tiny and vulnerable herself.

  ‘Come in. Sit down, how can I help? The case going all right, eh?’

  They seated themselves in the proffered chairs, Suzie noting how Tommy visibly relaxed, spreading himself, stretching out his legs, pointing his well-shod toes and leaning back. She thought to herself, the fur’s going to fly, for this was again Tommy at his most dangerous. When his whole body relaxed he was really winding himself up for the spring.

  ‘Case I want to talk about, actually,’ he started, a thin smile, not reaching his eyes, which never moved off the Chief Inspector’s face.

  ‘Glad to be of help.’

  Tommy moved straight in. ‘Why, Mr Tait…? Why…?’

  ‘Please, sir. Please call me Eric.’

  ‘…Why, Mr Tait, did you think this could be a random series of killings by some vagrant or vagrants seeking revenge?’

  ‘Well, it had the feel of revenge to it, and we’d had a number of problems with vagrants in the area. Unpleasant exchanges on doorsteps, uncouth people doing the rounds, begging, wanting money or food. Both often. Half gypsies, tramps kind of thing. Giving a lot of unpleasant lip to householders. We were worried that there could be violence.’

  ‘Nobody told me this.’ Soft, almost a whisper. ‘You didn’t advise me of this, Tait.’

  ‘My officer on the spot was supposed to give you the full picture. Capable man.’

  ‘You mean Titcombe?’

  Tait nodded and Tommy gave an irritated cough of contempt. ‘Titcombe who spends most of his time giving fatuous and unnecessary advice to my trained and experienced officers, but hasn’t parted with this information about vagrants? Police Constable 478 Walter Titcombe? That who we’re talking about?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I imagined… Yes.’

  ‘You imagined wrong then, Mr Tait. Did you imagine that an uncouth vagrant would purposely fire a shotgun into Max Ascoli’s face, then reload and prowl the house in search of others to whom he could mete out the same punishment?’

  ‘I’ve said. It had a taste of vengeance about it, yes.’ Tait’s voice clipped, bridling, comprehending that the senior officer was out for his blood.

  ‘A taste of vengeance? A taste? Ye gods, DCI Tait, it was like an execution in there. Didn’t you go in search of Ascoli’s links with local people?’

  ‘You mean Paula Palmer and her love child?’

  ‘Her daughter, yes. How many people know about that?’

  ‘She’s well known of course. Local celebrity. I suppose there are odd jokes and innuendoes in the Conservative Club bar, and in public bars across the town. You know what men are. They don’t do it in front of me because I let them know I won’t have that sort of talk. After all, I’m a church warden.’

  ‘I didn’t realize that.’ Tommy rolled his eyes towards heaven.

  ‘And women such as her — doing well in her chosen profession — would want to live down a terrible secret of their youth. Paula Palmer is well liked, but I suppose there’s always that small percentage of local people who won’t forget: won’t ever leave it alone.’

  ‘Like me, I suppose?’ Tommy went straight on, ‘I won’t forget, Mr Tait, because I know who the father is.’

  ‘Well, many of us do. Or at least think we know. Max Ascoli never made a secret out of it.’

  ‘And now the father’s dead. Fourteen miles away with his face blown off and his wife and child killed in the same manner, like some ritual.’

  Tait nodded, looking grim.

  ‘And is this just a cosy country secret or can anyone join in, nudge each other in the ribs as Paula Palmer passes by? I for one had to hear it from the Ascoli family, from Max Ascoli’s uncle. You didn’t even think to fill me in on local gossip, Mr Tait. Negligent in your duties, I’d say.’

  Tait did not reply, just kept sitting there with his profile outlined against the window behind him. Finally he murmured something about not really having had a chance to chat with DCS Livermore. ‘Busy country area to police. Can’t be everywhere, can’t remember everything. Thought you’d seek me out when you wanted local colour.’

  ‘That what you call it? Local colour? You weren’t by any chance waiting for some opportune moment when you could sweep in out of nowhere and put your colleagues from Scotland Yard in a poor light? Walk in like that stuffy little Belgian of Agatha Christie, solve the puzzle.’

  ‘I resent that, sir.’

  ‘Resent away, old sport, it won’t get you anywhere. Now, have you got any other local gossip you’d care to share with me?’

  Suzie was uncomfortable with the fireworks: lightning and the scent of powder in the air between the two men. She sensed a lot of trouble over this: shaping up to be a knock-down drag-out fight. Most unseemly.

  Finally it was Tait who spoke. ‘In the last year or so there’s been talk that she’s seeing — been seeing — Mr Ascoli again.’ He almost whispered it as if reticent about repeating the rumour aloud.

  Suzie thought: Well, he would, being a church warden and all.

  Tommy grunted and asked if there was anything else he might not yet have discovered for himself.

  ‘Well, there’s the tale about the mad brother.’

  Tommy’s face stiffened and Suzie moved in her chair.

  ‘What’s the tale about the mad brother then, DCI Tait? They keep him locked up at Knights Cottage, or something?’


  Tait rose, towering over them, and to Suzie the silhouette suddenly became familiar. One of Walt Disney’s rapacious birds that frightened Snow White in the scary forest.

  ‘I have no evidence,’ he began, looming over them. ‘No hard facts. The story is that Max Ascoli has a brother. The brother is called Phillip and he is crazily mad, and dangerous with it. There appears to be some truth in this.’

  Tommy nodded. Go on, he was saying.

  ‘The other story is that in the summer of 1938, the year before the war started, the year Chamberlain flew to Munich and came back with a little piece of paper with Hitler’s signature on it: the peace in our time year —’

  ‘Yes?’ Tommy really asking a question.

  ‘It is said that towards the end of August in that year, 1938, Max Ascoli went to wherever his brother is kept — one of the tales is that it is in a sanatorium in Switzerland — and brought his brother back to London and then came up here with him. To Knights Cottage in Long Taddmarten.’

  ‘And?’ Tommy asked again.

  ‘There are those who claim to have seen them together. In Taddmarten.’

  ‘And he is still there?’

  You’d have Max’s murderer if Pip was out and about in this country. No doubt about it. That’s what Freddy had said.

  ‘No.’ A great shaking of his big head. ‘No, the story is that Max Ascoli took him back from whence he’d come. Came back to Taddmarten alone. I can only vouch that it’s a tale. It could be idle chatter with no foundation in fact. Something that’s grown out of the stories of Ascoli having a mad brother. A dangerously mad brother. You know how people like to gossip if there’s a hint of danger. It could be just that. Someone conjuring dark tales to chill the blood and send a shiver up the back of people’s necks as they go home, late at night in Taddmarten.’

  ‘How much credence do you give the story?’

  Tait frowned, licked his lips, opened his mouth but before he could speak there was a tap on the door and the WPC came half into the room. ‘Urgent telephone call for Mr Livermore, sir.’

  It was Molly with the news that the shotgun had been found, buried on the grass verge along the main road, beside the chain-link fence that bordered the aerodrome.

  ‘We have to go,’ Tommy already on his feet from taking the telephone call. ‘But before we do, Detective Chief Inspector, how much credence do you give the story? That the dangerously mad brother was brought to Taddmarten.’

  ‘I don’t know, sir, and I’ve never actually investigated it. I think you’d have to ask in Taddmarten itself. Then make up your own mind.’

  Tommy nodded. Then Tait spoke again —

  ‘There is one other thing, sir.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘One thing that could be useful. Only just come in. I looked through the reports. Of course you’re looking for one woman — the Lavender woman…’

  ‘Rosemary Lattimer?’

  ‘That’s the one, sir. We think we may have her going under the name of Midge, something or other.’ He turned over some papers on his desk to show a drawing of a girl’s face.

  Tommy nodded. ‘Yes, that could just be Lavender. Suzie?’

  She nodded. ‘Possibly. In the dark with the light behind her. Definitely.’

  ‘Been hanging around with this one.’ Another drawing, artist’s impression as they liked to call them. ‘She’s going under the name of Queenie. Would fit together, two of them getting Goldfinch out.’

  ‘I take these?’ Tommy asked.

  ‘I have them for you. They’ve been whoring around the Cambridge and the Newmarket area.’

  ‘Interesting if they helped to extricate Golly.’

  ‘Very, sir.’

  Brian got them back in incredibly good time. They stayed on the main road and, well in advance, saw the little knot of people by the roadside some two hundred yards or so before the turn that took you to the aerodrome’s main gate: four of the King’s Lynn uniformed people keeping a small strangle of village and US personnel at a distance from the spot that had been marked out with saw horses.

  Tommy alighted from the car first, greeted by a smiling Molly, pleased with herself. Other people from his team stood around and, on the far side of the fence a pair of snowdrops — US military policemen — stood in a vaguely menacing attitude.

  ‘So you found it?’

  ‘Well, Captain Skeggs’s men found it, Chief. And it wasn’t really buried.’ She led him to the side of the road, pointing down through the grass and weeds that had covered a ditch — three to four feet deep — running parallel to the road, a couple of feet in towards the tall chain-link fence, the boundary to stop people wandering towards the lines of huts and buildings bordering on the aircraft taxiway another three hundred yards distant.

  ‘Whoever did it just dropped the gun down here.’ Molly pointed to the overgrown ditch. ‘Quite invisible, grass is thick as fleas on a dog down here. Unless someone actually fell into the ditch it might not have been found for months. Ron and Laura have taken photos in situ and of other interesting things.’

  ‘Is it the twin to the other Purdey shotgun we found?’

  ‘No doubt about that, Chief. I’ve had it taken back to the Falcon and Doc’s going to run it straight over to Hendon for all the forensics. Dennis is giving it a good check-up first, okay, sir?’

  ‘Seems you’ve done everything.’

  ‘Well, there is one more point.’ She daintily half-stepped, half-jumped across the ditch, a couple of feet wide, and pointed towards the fence. ‘See, Chief. Interesting bit of tampering here.’

  The reason for the couple of snowdrops became clear: the chain-link fence had been cut, a slit running from the ground to around five or six feet in height with the outer edges of the slit turned in so that anyone could force themselves on to the aerodrome with no trouble.

  ‘Are we meant to think that whoever dropped the shotgun used a pair of wire cutters to let himself on to the airfield?’ Suzie asked.

  ‘So it would seem. The nearest buildings, do we know what they are?’

  Molly said they were living quarters, mainly aircrew huts. ‘I’ve been through and had a look,’ she said. ‘Proper little homes from home some of them.’

  ‘Ron take pictures of this?’

  ‘Done the whole thing, Chief. It’ll make quite a family album.’

  ‘And the MPs?’

  ‘Waiting for us to say they can get the thing made good, I think.’

  ‘Well, not just yet, eh. We need a little more time.’

  ‘Ron Worral says that the cut wire has probably been like that for some time. Didn’t think it was recent. Week or two old, he says, traces of rust already on the inside of the wire: where it’s been cut.’

  ‘He can be sure of that?’ Suzie asked.

  ‘You know Ron.’ Molly smiled. ‘If he tells you it’s been there for more than a couple of days then you can bet that’s how it is.’ Ron was extraordinarily accurate, careful and precise. If he had been uncertain about how long the cut had been there, he would have said. Ron’s word was usually good enough for Tommy.

  ‘Have to speak with the head snowdrop I think,’ and he called out to the MPs who still waited, patiently but with some menace. ‘Where’s your senior officer?’

  One of the men moved some two paces towards the wire. ‘At the Guardroom, sir. Main gate, sir. Major Bragg, sir. He’ll either be there or in his other office in the Exec Building, sir.’

  Tommy stepped back and guided Molly on to the macadam surface of the road, standing close to her, heads almost touching. ‘I want you to secure this site.’ He put an arm around her shoulders: fatherly, Suzie told herself. ‘Leave one uniform here, Molly. Just for the time being, and for God’s sake don’t forget about him. I don’t want him left out all night on his own. Let’s see if we need anyone else, okay?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Then you trot along to the main gate and see this Bragg fellow — probably their Provost Marshal, okay? Tell him
we’re terribly sorry but could he police their side of the wire for a day or two. Be incredibly nice about it. In your hands, right?’

  ‘You’re not going to talk to him?’ Molly Abelard not happy doing her boss’s job for a change.

  ‘Not at this stage, heart. No. If I begin nosy-parkering around on the aerodrome they’ll have me off fast as fornication. United States territory and all that. I’ll do most of my talking to their people either at the Falcon or at the dance tonight.’ He gave her a look that signalled duplicity and her part in a conspiracy.

  ‘Right, Chief.’ Not altogether convincing.

  ‘Good, I’m taking Suzie back to the Falcon, have a word with Dennis and take a look at the shotgun. See you back there, Moll.’

  ‘I could’ve done the job with their Provost Marshal,’ Suzie griped as she got into the car.

  ‘You forgetting, heart? Forgetting that Golly has a price on your head and that he’s out and on the loose?’

  She hadn’t forgotten, just pushed it out of the way.

  A few minutes later, as they left the car and walked up to the Falcon’s main door, so a cheeky little blonde came out, hair bouncing against the collar of her thin raincoat.

  ‘I know that girl from somewhere,’ Tommy muttered.

  ‘So do I.’ Suzie shaking her head, frowning, had a clear picture of the cheeky dimpled face and the spectacles, but couldn’t place it. ‘Press maybe?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘That was them,’ Lavender said as Queenie slid back into the Austin Seven, patting her blonde wig.

  ‘I know, and I walked right past them without even flashing the buggers.’

  Lavender started the car. ‘Well?’ she queried.

  ‘Yeah, very bleeding well, Lavender. Talked to the daughter of the house, bouncy Beryl. Not over-clean, I suspect, but she’s not backward in coming forward.’

  ‘They got a spare room?’

  ‘One. One only. Number seventeen and the WDS, the one we want, is in fourteen. I booked seventeen for me and my hubby, Sunday night, name of Mr and Mrs David Powell — that’s right, ain’t it?’