The Thief of St Martins

by Caron Allan

  The Thief of St Martins:

  Dottie Manderson mysteries book 5

  The Thief of St Martins: Dottie Manderson mysteries book 5: a traditional cosy mystery set in the 1930s

  Copyright 2018 © Caron Allan

  The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the owner of this work.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including but not limited to: graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any informational storage retrieval system without advanced prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction, and is not based on a true story or on real characters.

  The Thief of St Martins:

  Dottie Manderson mysteries book 5

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  About the Author

  Also by Caron Allan:

  Coming Soon – 2020

  Coming soon: 2020

  Late 2020/Early 2021

  Chapter One

  Sussex, England, Thursday 3rd January 1935.

  Dottie sat on the hard bench and made up her mind she would be here a while. She couldn’t give way now. To keep her nerves steady and her eyes dry, she fixed her attention on the cell itself.

  First, she measured with her eyes the length and breadth. About eight feet by six or seven, she decided. More or less the size of the small staff cloakroom off the scullery passage at home. Then she looked at the way the two benches were attached to the wall—presumably so no one could pick them up and throw them at anyone else, the immense, terrifying female warder for example, or another inmate.

  She glanced at, then quickly away from, the other two women in the cell. She wondered vaguely if one could catch fleas from being in prison. She had been so itchy since her arrival. She scraped at a spot just behind her knee. Then, itchy again, she risked a further covert look at them from behind her hand as she scratched her temple.

  The woman on the other bench was hunched up against the wall, concealed beneath a huge ragged shawl, apparently asleep. Her shoes—holed and heel-less—lay beneath the bench, one resting on top of the other. One bare grubby foot poked out from under a skirt or some other dark voluminous garment.

  On the opposite end of Dottie’s bench, the other woman leered at her, open-mouthed and gap-toothed. She was a red-faced greasy-looking creature in what appeared to be just her underclothes—and none too clean either—with a blanket wrapped around her. She was clearly amused at the idea of a well-to-do young lady in jail with a couple of ‘women of ill repute’. She looked strong and aggressive. Her bare arms, poking out from under the blanket in spite of the chill, were muscular and solid. Dottie felt a knot of anxiety in the pit of her stomach.

  It seemed a lifetime later that the outer door opened, very slightly thinning the darkness with a little grey light from the corridor beyond. Before the warder—a woman of almost six feet in height, and not much less in girth—had even begun to unlock the gate, she was bellowing orders at them. Dottie’s two companions took little notice; it was Dottie she’d come for.

  ‘Manley, get up. You’ve got a gentleman caller.’

  The red-faced woman along Dottie’s bench laughed.

  The ‘sleeping’ woman called out, ‘And not for the first time, neither!’ then cackled at her own wit. So not asleep after all. The cackling gave way to a paroxysm of coughing and hacking that made Dottie feel ill.

  Dottie approached the bars with caution, then seeing they were all laughing at her timidity, she straightened her back and lifted her chin.

  ‘It’s Manderson, thank you very much. Not Manley.’

  But they only laughed harder. Dottie bit her lip. She would not cry. She wouldn’t give any of them the satisfaction.

  The warder pinioned her by the arm and chivvied her out into the draughty corridor, pausing to handcuff her. The corridor was almost as dark as the cell, and Dottie was slow to see where she was to go or understand what the warder wanted her to do. As a result, she got slapped twice by the warder, who clearly believed in the adage that actions spoke louder than words.

  A door on the right was thrown open, and Dottie was thrust, blinking, into a room brightly lit by an electric light hanging low over the table. A figure across the room rose, but with the light in her eyes it was half a minute before she found the chair and sat down. Then she looked across the table into the eyes of Inspector Hardy.

  It was so unexpected. It broke her composure entirely. The tears ran down her face, and with no handkerchief to check them, the prison uniform rapidly became spotted with damp patches.

  Hardy was aware of a rage greater than anything he’d ever felt in his life. He glared at the warder.

  ‘Get those handcuffs off her at once! Then get out. This is a private interview.’

  The warder threw the keys onto the table and giving him a filthy look, banged out of the room.

  He came around the table to unlock the cuffs. It concerned him to see bruises on Dottie’s wrists, and it made him feel ten times worse when she said very quietly, ‘Oh no, those aren’t from just now, those are from yesterday when they first brought me in.’

  He removed the handcuffs and threw them down on the table with a bang. He had to do that, or he would have taken each wrist in his hand, stroked each bruise then kissed it. He forced himself to get his temper and his emotions under control. The loud noise of the handcuffs falling onto the table helped, as did the swift action of it. He took a deep breath, resumed his seat, and, not knowing what else to do, began to shuffle his papers.

  When he glanced up, her lovely hazel eyes, with the dark smudges beneath them, were resting on his face. She’d stopped crying but tears streaked her cheeks. He was dismayed by how pale and fragile she looked. He looked down at his papers again, then cleared his throat.

  ‘So, it seems you’re being charged with murder.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dottie Manderson. She couldn’t think of anything else to add.

  Chapter Two

  Friday 30th November 1934

  Dottie Manderson twirled in front of her dressing mirror, observing with satisfaction the way the long skirt flared and flowed about her legs. It would be perfect! She reached for the matching opera gloves and began to ease them on.

  Half an hour later she was feeling less sure. Her mother, encountering her on the stairs, had given her a slight frown and said, ‘Dorothy dear, that frock’s rather daring, don’t you think?’

  Dottie had stuck her chin in the air and said, ‘Exactly!’ and continued into the room where the dancing would take place. It was really both the drawing room and the dining room, thrown together by the opening of the adjoining doors to create a large space, then rolling back the carpets. A little band was tuning up in one corner. Her father always liked to have a modern dance band for special occasions.

  She could see Gervase over in the opposite corner, a little gaggle of people around him, hanging on his every word. But before she could reach his side, another man, closer at hand, spoke
to her.

  ‘Good Lord, Miss Manderson, are you trying to give every man here a heart attack?’

  William Hardy. Police inspector, almost-boyfriend, and now, to Dottie’s mind, an odious man she had been taking great pains to avoid. Her family, it seemed, took delight in annoying her by inviting him to this or that event or occasion, and not warning her in advance. He stared at her, his eyes light with amusement—and—with something else she couldn’t quite name. She felt irked. She had forbidden him the use of her first name some months ago, and therefore she now had no recourse to his.

  ‘Is it any of your business, inspector?’

  She knew she sounded waspish and this was not at all the way one addressed a guest in one’s parents’ home. A guest presumably invited to the house by those same parents. But...damn the man! Why did he make her feel she had to lash out at him all the time?

  He hid his annoyance by taking a sip of his drink. ‘I suppose not, though as a police officer I’m very much against vice, and the top of that thing you no doubt call a dress is practically pornographic. I’m fairly sure a bathing dress would cover more.’

  She couldn’t deny the top of the ruby silk dress was almost non-existent. With no sleeves or bodice in the conventional sense, her shoulders and back were completely bare. At the front, modesty was just barely maintained by two triangles connected to the waistband of the dress with long narrow bands, leaving a tantalising triangle of bare midriff, and that was it. The narrow bands that went up from the triangles formed the straps around her neck that held the thing up. She looked down at it, moved her hips and felt the skirt swooshing around her calves and ankles, then met his eyes with a laughing, joyous look.

  ‘I designed it myself,’ she told him with pride. ‘It’ll be heavenly to dance in.’ She gave a quick twirl.

  ‘For you? Or your partner?’ He could imagine all too well the feel of her soft warm skin. Surely she had no idea how men would be affected by the almost complete lack of a bodice to the dress, not to mention the little window in the centre to her midriff, and the truly gorgeous satin gloves that reached to the top of her arms, her smooth shoulders so bare and alluring. He was furious at the thought of any other man touching her. Of Gervase Parfitt touching her. He was forced to hide his temper yet again and adopted a polite social smile. ‘I hope your dancing partner has warm hands.’

  ‘Can you believe I almost thought of hanging a label on my back saying, ‘other shades available, fourteen guineas’.’

  ‘Fourteen guineas! My word!’ He grinned at her then, and it was the old William, before all the anger and pain had come between them. She caught herself smiling back, then pulled herself up. She couldn’t stand here and let him grin at her. Across the room, Gervase acknowledged her arrival with a smile of his own.

  ‘Excuse me, inspector.’

  Then as she began to turn away from him, he said softly, for her ears alone, ‘No one else will look half as good as you in that dress.’

  That threw her. She couldn’t help glancing back at him. He seemed sincere. His eyes, shadowed, almost grey in this light rather than the deep blue she found so appealing, regarded her steadily. Unable to think of anything else to say, she repeated herself. ‘Excuse me, inspector.’ She walked away. She felt his eyes on the bare skin of her back; she fidgeted with the top of the gloves. She no longer felt quite so happy about the dress. Her mother had been right, it was too much for a little party like this.

  William watched her go. He watched as she approached Parfitt. She leaned in against Parfitt’s body, her hand going into the crook of the man’s arm. Parfitt gave her a quick glance then returned to his anecdote. Dottie smiled as they all did at the culmination of the tale.

  With a sigh, Hardy looked down at the wine glass he held. He’d snapped the stem clean through. Arthur Greeley, Dottie’s sister’s butler, on loan as he often was from the other household for special occasions, came over and relieved him of it, handing him a replacement.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, sir, it’s not just you. That’s the fourth we’ve had in the last two minutes.’ He too turned to look at Dottie across the room. ‘Any chap who buys his wife a dress like that will find himself faced with a very heavy glass bill whenever she wears it.’

  ‘Yes,’ William said. ‘I imagine he will. Not that any other woman will have the same devastating effect as Miss Manderson. If I could afford to buy my wife a frock like that, it would be worth every penny of the fourteen guineas.’

  ‘Very true, sir. Do excuse me.’ Greeley moved off to the next gentleman, thinking to himself, I can’t wait to get back to the kitchen and tell them they were right about the inspector. He’s as smitten as ever, if not more so.

  Gervase’s eyes told her he approved the dress. She clutched his arm and became part of the chatter that centred around him. Men and women alike took in every line of her dress, though perhaps not for the same reason. Dottie hoped she might receive some orders over the next few days; that would probably be the only good thing to come out of wearing it tonight.

  Since Mrs Carmichael’s death, the fortunes of the warehouse had gone into a slight decline. Dottie could only hope her plans for the next two seasons would change all that. In bleak moments of doubt, usually in the middle of the night when fear nibbled at her self-belief, she felt afraid the business would fail because of her incompetence. She still had so much to learn.

  If only the music would start, and they could dance. She acknowledged a secret treacherous thought that the dress was very decorative—but it was not very warm, and after all, they were almost in December. Even with the fire lit and all these bodies in the room, she was rapidly growing cold. She folded her arms over the non-existent bodice and wished she could put on a coat.

  This gave her an idea, and as Gervase’s latest anecdote came to an end, and he took a smiling step back from the knot of laughing men and women around him, Dottie’s imagination was busily fashioning a dress exactly the same as the one she was wearing but with a matching dainty, miniscule wrap to go about the shoulders, perhaps with spangles of some sort.

  ‘A drink, Dottie dear?’

  Thrusting her designs aside, she beamed at him. ‘Oh yes please.’

  He took his own empty glass and went to get his refill along with a drink for Dottie. A friend of Dottie’s mother, a woman in her late thirties, made a comment to Dottie about the dress, and her mood soaring, Dottie began to tell the woman about the warehouse. It quickly became clear she had a new client. Dottie’s ‘professional’ eye took in the woman’s dated and slightly rusty black gown. A glance about the room showed that most older women still favoured black, and the younger women largely wore white evening gowns. One or two wore other colours, but they were of sombre, muted shades. There ought to be more colour, Dottie thought with passion. Women needed some colour in their lives.

  Gervase stood waiting for the servant to bring the drinks. Every now and then he sent a glance back towards Dottie, closely observing everyone she spoke to or laughed with. He was pleased to see she was conversing with a slightly dull-looking woman of his own age.

  Gervase glanced to his right. He was standing beside a tall, fair, well-built young man, though definitely not well-to-do if the fellow’s evening attire was anything to go by. Nevertheless, he was clearly a guest, so Gervase was inclined to be pleasant.

  ‘William Hardy,’ said William Hardy, holding out his right hand to Gervase. ‘A friend of the Mandersons. Mr Manderson knew my father years ago.’

  Gervase shook his hand. ‘Ah. Nice to meet you. I’m Gervase Parfitt, the Assistant Chief Constable of Derbyshire. I’m engaged to Mr Manderson’s daughter Dorothy.’

  Hardy knew that of course. It was the reason he’d come over. It intrigued him that Parfitt felt the need to give his professional rank as he introduced himself. Did he think it made him seem powerful? It was common for men of rank to make sure everyone knew how important they were. It chimed perfectly with the impression he’d already formed of the man.<
br />
  But Hardy simply smiled and nodded. ‘Delighted to meet you.’

  ‘Quite a dress she’s wearing this evening, don’t you think? My fiancée, I’m talking about, of course,’ Gervase said, casting another proprietorial glance in Dottie’s direction. His eyes narrowed as a man halted to speak with her. She gave the fellow a smile, the chap nodded then moved on. Gervase relaxed once more.

  With some hesitation Hardy agreed it was quite a dress.

  ‘Designed it herself. She dabbles a little in dressmaking. Always looks very decorative. That’s important to someone in my position, of course.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Congratulations, you’re a very lucky man. Have you set a date?’

  ‘Not officially. She won’t even announce the engagement until she’s twenty-one. That’s in March, so not long to wait, though I confess I’m rather impatient to be on my honeymoon. I’ll probably have the engagement given out in April or May with the wedding to follow as soon as possible after that. Wait until the weather’s likely to be half decent, and of course, I’ll need to take plenty of time off for the honeymoon, as I’m sure you can imagine.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Hardy said again. He already didn’t like Gervase. In fact even before he’d met him, he had formed a deep dislike of him. Out of a mixture of curiosity and sheer green-eyed jealousy, Hardy had set out to discover as much about the fellow as he could. What he had found out confirmed his worst doubts, and he could have cheerfully knocked Parfitt down. But he knew that was mostly personal, although some of it was professional pride. The way the man undressed her with his eyes... The self-satisfied smirk on his face... And talking to a complete stranger about his honeymoon... Everything Parfitt said and did added fuel to Hardy’s dislike. But he hid all that and said simply, ‘And shall you live in London?’

  ‘Good God, no. Can’t stand the place. And there’s my work, of course.’

  ‘Of course. I suppose Miss Manderson will relocate her fashion warehouse?’

  If Hardy sounded too well informed about the lady, the other man luckily failed to notice. Gervase took the drinks from the servant and prepared to return to Dottie’s side. He frowned over Hardy’s words. ‘I hardly think so. My wife will naturally be very taken up with supporting me socially, and of course there’ll be the nursery to think of. She’ll hardly have time to play about with her dressmaking then. In any case, it would hardly be fitting for the wife of a man in my position to wear some dress she’d made herself, no matter how revealing.’