“I was,” she said. “But I don’t believe everything that I am told. Where were you that night?”
“Being debriefed by my superiors,” he said. “And no, you can’t verify it with them, because you are not allowed to know who they are. You can bloody well take my word for it, because you have no business knowing anything else. Or even this much.”
“Why did you follow Miss La Salle to our office?”
“Because I wanted to know where she was going,” he said. “Then I had to see what the two of you were all about.”
“Why did you care about where she was going?”
“Tillie’s been up to something,” he said. “Or was. I thought she was running some kind of side game, and I thought this might have been part of it.”
“Side game? What was the main game?”
“She worked for Archie,” said Pilcher. “That’s how I got in. I romanced her, wormed my way in, made myself useful. Then she dropped me.”
“Her girlfriends said you dropped her.”
“That’s what she told them, I guess,” said Pilcher. “But something else was going on. When I heard she got killed, I thought it might have had something to do with that.”
“What kind of work did she do for Archie?”
“She got information from blokes who couldn’t help talking to pretty girls. Information that led to a lot of lorries getting robbed, warehouses getting looted.”
“Could any of that have led to someone killing her?”
“Maybe.”
“What about Archie himself?”
“If he thought she was playing him for a fool, he would have done it without batting an eye,” said Pilcher.
“Maybe he did,” said Iris. “Did he say anything when he heard she was killed?”
“Nothing other than surprise,” said Pilcher. “He was angry. I was worried he might have thought I had done it. Exes going at it and all. I tell you, I was never more relieved when I heard they got that fellow you set her up with. Took the heat off of me.”
“You’re welcome,” sighed Iris. “So if it wasn’t you, and if it wasn’t Dickie Trower—any idea where Archie was that night?”
“Like I said, I wasn’t with him,” said Pilcher. “So I can’t tell you where he was, and I’m not about to go asking him.”
“What’s the big fish? You still haven’t told me.”
“Yeah, well, there’s the problem. The big fish got away.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were right about the nylons being small fry. The big money is in clothing coupons.”
“Selling stolen coupons? There’s enough money in that to keep them going?”
“You have no idea. Coupons go for four to six shillings apiece, and books go for up to four pounds each.”
“All right, that’s a lot, but to steal enough to make real money—”
“They aren’t stealing them,” said Pilcher. “They’re fixing on making their own.”
“Forgery? On how large a scale?”
“Large. They were planning on printing tens of thousands of coupon books.”
“Were? What happened?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. The new annual books get issued at the end of the month. Archie somehow got hold of a set of plates for the new coupons. I don’t know if they’re originals or they managed to make a mould, but they were going to put out copies that look just like the genuine article.”
“So what stopped them?”
“Someone nicked the plates from Archie,” said Pilcher. “Inside job, maybe a month ago. No honour amongst spivs, I’m sorry to say. The old boy may be smiling and spreading good cheer, but inside he’s ready to hang people on meat hooks and roast ’em slowly.”
“Could that have been Tillie’s handiwork? The side game?”
“Maybe. I didn’t think Tillie was that deep in that she’d have known about it, but I’m wondering about it now.”
“You said she had a knack for getting men to talk about things they shouldn’t talk about.”
“She did, yeah,” said Pilcher. “Something you have in common. But I don’t think she knew about the plates.”
“You knew about them,” said Iris. “Why didn’t you have the whole lot arrested when you found out?”
“Because I only found out about the plates after they were nicked from Archie,” said Pilcher. “Without them, there’s nothing to pin on him, and I’d have wasted nearly a year’s work just to get them on selling nylons. That isn’t exactly the big score we’re hoping for. He’d be back on the outside in no time.”
“What if you brought me in?” asked Iris.
“What?”
“Keep me in the fold. I could winnow out something more about Tillie, and maybe find something to help you out into the bargain.”
“You have to be joking. Bad enough that you tumbled me, but now you want to double the chances I get my cover blown?”
“I know what I’m doing,” she said.
“Says you.”
“Besides, it would be awfully strange if that was my only appearance with you, now that our torrid affair is out in the open.”
He kicked angrily at a chunk of broken brick, sending it clattering down the cobblestones.
“That’s the problem with being nice to people in this world,” he said. “It gets you nothing but trouble.”
“Is that a yes?”
“I’ll speak to my superiors tonight,” he said. “If they say yes, then it’s a go.”
“Thank you, Mister Pilcher,” she said.
“You better start calling me Rog,” he said. “Mary.”
“I will,” she said. “I may even use some embarrassing pet name. Would you like some verisimilitude to take back with you?”
“Meaning what?”
She put her arms around his neck and kissed him, making sure to leave some lipstick behind.
“I wasn’t ready,” he protested as she pulled away. “I can do it better.”
“Don’t wipe off the lipstick until they see it on you,” she advised him. “I must say, I am very impressed that you’ve been doing this as well as you have for so long, Rog. Keep your nose clean.”
“I think I’m safer with gangsters than I am with you,” he called as she headed into the station.
“That’s probably true,” she said. “Ta ta, lover.”
* * *
She stared out the train window, trying to put her thoughts in order. Assessing her performance.
She found it wanting. Too reckless, too dependent on improvisation. And she had gone in with no backup other than—
“Damn,” she said, looking at her watch.
Then she heaved a sigh of relief. It was only four fifteen. She had forgotten to call Sally and let him know that she was safe. She would have to find a phone box at the transfer station and make sure he didn’t send the police into the warehouse after her.
That was not the sort of mistake she should be making. Why was she so hell-bent on proving herself today?
Was it because she had ended things with Andrew? Was she overreacting by trying to show she could out-spy the spy? And out-detect the detective while she was at it? Was she trying to solve the case so she could throw the mess in Mike’s face as well?
Pathetic, Iris.
What did she have to show for her efforts? She had eliminated her top prospect for the murder, and nearly scuttled an official investigation, which was precisely what Detective Sergeant Ex had warned her against. But she might also have wormed her way closer to Miss La Salle’s murderer, assuming the dead girl had indeed been double-crossing Archie.
The train pulled into Whitechapel. Iris exited and hurried to the nearest phone box and called the Right Sort. To her surprise, Gwen answered.
“I was expecting Sally,” said Iris.
“He’s still here,” said Gwen. “He says he’s in the throes of a bisexual love triangle which means that there are at least six possible permutations to work th
rough. He’s drawing diagrams and cursing in different languages.”
“Sounds like he’s in full Muse,” said Iris. “How did things go with the psychiatrist?”
“He feels that our pursuit of justice is not entirely insane,” said Gwen. “It gave me some hope.”
“I may have to disagree with him,” said Iris. “I jumped into a rabbit hole today. I landed in a pair of nylons.”
“Enigmatic. Can you tell me more?”
“I don’t want to hold you up from tilting with the family gorgon,” said Iris. “I’m going to head straight back to the flat. But it looks like Pilcher isn’t our man after all.”
“What? Are you sure?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“What changed your mind?”
“Long story,” she said. “And my train is coming in. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning. Give my love to Sally.”
She hung up.
Because it is a woman’s prerogative to change her mind, she thought.
Because today I kissed a man who I was ready to stab yesterday, she thought.
Story of my life, she thought.
CHAPTER 12
Gwen hung up the telephone. Sally sat muttering at the other desk, shifting voices. She surmised from the changes in register that the love triangle involved two men and a woman. Or possibly a second woman who smoked to excess.
“That was Iris,” she said. “She’s safe.”
“I expected nothing less,” said Sally.
“She said that she’s ruled out Roger Pilcher as a suspect,” said Gwen. “Which narrows the field down to the rest of the city of London.”
“I was at a dinner party that night,” said Sally.
“All right, you’re off the list,” said Gwen.
“I shall rest easier knowing that,” said Sally. “Will you be needing my services tomorrow while you’re out seeking justice?”
“Do we seem that ridiculous?” she asked.
“Everyone and everything seem ridiculous at the moment,” he said. “That’s why the only serious work is to be found in the theatre.”
He pulled out a manuscript, looked at it thoughtfully, then started crossing out page after page with his pen.
“You edit with great abundance,” observed Gwen. “There must be something in there worth saving.”
“There is,” said Sally, holding up one of the exed-out pages. “The other side.”
He reversed the page and fed it into the typewriter so that the blank side faced him.
“Damned shortages,” he said. “It’s harder and harder to get what I need, so I’m sacrificing some of my juvenilia for the greater good. It’s too bad we aren’t back in the Dark Ages. If I was using parchment, I could scrape it down and start over.”
“If only one could do that with memories,” said Gwen.
“Oh, that’s good! May I steal it?”
“Be my guest.”
He scribbled it on the margins of one of the used pages.
“What was the failed play?” she asked.
“One of my university efforts,” he said. “Lifetimes ago. Embarrassing to look at now. Glad to be getting some use out of it finally.”
“You knew Iris at Cambridge, didn’t you?”
“Quite well.”
“Were you and she ever—”
She thought carefully about her choice of words.
“—an item?”
“Oh, Lord,” he laughed ruefully. “There wasn’t a proper man at Cambridge who wasn’t in love with Iris Sparks. This sad little melodrama that I am consigning to the palimpsest stage was one I wrote expressly for the purpose of casting her in the lead, with me as her romantic opposite.”
“How did it go?”
“It was terrible,” he said. “Written for the wrong reasons, but from the heart. I worked in as much torrid lovemaking as I could get away with. Most girls avoided me back then, big galumphing monster that I am. Not Sparks. She was fearlessly kind, if such a thing is possible. Why, I remember once in training—”
He stopped abruptly.
“Well, not my story to tell,” he said. “Not in nonfictional form, anyway.”
“You were in training together?” asked Gwen.
“Forget I ever said that,” he said. “Please. And don’t mention anything about it to Sparks.”
“You were behind enemy lines,” said Gwen. “You were a saboteur or something.”
“Or something. I’ve forgotten all of it very quickly.”
“A decorated hero, she said.”
“She likes to puff me up,” said Sally. “It wasn’t as exciting as all that. Lots of sleeping in caves and cellars, trying to stay safe and warm and dry.”
“Was that something that she trained to do?”
“She hasn’t told you?”
“She says that she can’t.”
“Then I can’t, either. Besides, I don’t know most of it. I was away, catching colds in foreign climes.”
“All this secrecy,” said Gwen bitterly. “I wish that she would simply lie to me rather than drop these ominous hints.”
“But she doesn’t want to lie to you, don’t you see?” said Sally. “I think that you’ve been good for her in a strange sort of way. She’s someone who loves to spin tales at the drop of a hat, but she won’t lie to you. You may be the first person for whom she’s ever been like that.”
“Will she ever tell me the truth about the war?”
“Have you told her everything about your life?” asked Sally.
“Not by a long shot.”
“There you are,” he said. “It will give the two of you something to do on those dreary, rainy days when Love is too tired to climb the stairs.”
“Could you come in tomorrow?”
“Of course. Planning to be in the field?”
“I don’t know what the plan is anymore,” said Gwen. “But it helps having you here.”
“I no longer unnerve you?”
“She told you that? I’m so sorry. No, Sally, you no longer unnerve me. You are a big, galumphing man, but you are a very dear, big, galumphing man.”
“Thank you, kind lady,” he said, taking her hand and kissing it gently. “I shall return.”
“Sally,” she said hesitantly.
“Yes?”
“Could you show me what your fiercest character is like? I want to borrow it.”
* * *
Two trains and a bus after leaving Wapping, Iris turned onto her street in Marylebone. Her thoughts were still occupied with the day’s events, but not so much that she wasn’t immediately aware that she was being followed by a black Bentley with darkened windows.
She stopped walking. The car pulled up, and a uniformed officer got out, then opened the rear passenger door.
“Get in,” he said.
“My mother always told me never to get in cars with strangers,” she said, eyeing him up and down, searching for weak spots. He didn’t appear to have any.
“But we’re not strangers, are we, Sparks?” said the Brigadier, leaning forward into view.
“Will this take long?” asked Sparks. “It’s been a tiring day.”
“One circuit around Regent’s Park should be sufficient,” he said. “And I have whisky.”
“Why didn’t you mention that at the start?” she asked, sliding in next to him.
The officer closed the door, then got in front with the driver. There was a thick glass partition separating them.
“This will be a private conversation,” said the Brigadier, noticing her glancing at it.
He was in civvies, wearing a neatly tailored grey pinstriped suit that predated the war. He had salt-and-pepper hair, and his mustache had turned a solid grey since she last saw him. He might have passed for a banker were it not for the ramrod straightness of his back. And the eyes which examined quickly, judged thoroughly, and executed unsentimentally. She wondered what the verdict would be on her. Or had the sentence already been pronounced?
He unlatched a panel in the back of the driver’s seat, revealing a bottle and two tumblers. He poured for them both as the car began to move.
“You’ll have to take it neat, I’m afraid,” he said, handing her a glass.
“I prefer it neat,” she said, taking it. “To absent friends.”
“To absent friends,” he repeated, tapping his glass against hers. “You’re looking fit, Sparks. Those stairs are doing you a favour. Not to mention all of that traipsing about the wilds of the East End.”
“You know about that.”
“Merely what your former paramour told me,” said the Brigadier.
“Oh, you are up to date!” she said. “Is that what you boys do when we’re not around? Gossip? Did he call you from the airport, weeping copiously over his loss? Is your shoulder still damp from the tears?”
“He was rather bent out of shape,” said the Brigadier. “Not how I want him going back into the field, but I believe that he will emerge from this intact. Frankly, I think that you’re both better off. It was not a healthy affair, if you want my opinion.”
“What if I don’t want it?”
“Then ignore it.”
“Consider it ignored, sir. Now, may I ask what prompted this descent from the gods?”
“Hmph. More like a rise from the depths. How nice to be tooling about in a comfy car with a pretty girl while there’s still daylight to be enjoyed.”
“It’s even better without the smoked windows, but they do make the girl look prettier,” said Sparks. “As does the whisky. Compliments aside, why are you here?”
“To see if Major Sutton was telling the truth.”
“As far as I know, Andrew only lies for the Crown and to his wife,” said Sparks. “Give me the particulars.”
“He says that you turned down my invitation to rejoin the group.”
“That, I’m afraid, was true,” said Sparks.
“Why, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“The war ended, didn’t it? I’m quite certain I read something about it in the papers at the time.”
“That war ended. The next one is in full swing. We need boots on the ground, Sparks.”
“Mine are badly in need of repair.”
“Your Russian and German are still fluent?”
“Da und ja, mein General-Kommissar.”
The Right Sort of Man Page 21