Murder Offstage (16 page)

Seventeen

‘What do you want, Blake? Make it snappy.’

Posie was observing from a side-room, through a two-way
mirror. Oats had gone for the night.

Two uniformed bobbies stood sentry at the door of the
interview room, and Mr Blake was sitting upright with some difficulty on one of
the regulation hard wooden chairs. His green velvet jacket looked crushed and
soiled, and there were horrible-looking stains over his white dress-shirt.

‘What’s in it for me?’ he slurred, clutching at the table to
steady himself.

His face looked sweatier and paler than the last time Posie
had seen him, and it occurred to her that Mr Blake must be very, very drunk
indeed. Even by his standards. She grinned: the moonshine Len had bought had
obviously done the trick.

Inspector Lovelace sighed. He was not a man to enter into
bargains, and he did things by the book. ‘Nothing is in this for you, I’m
afraid, apart from the knowledge that you are being a good, law-abiding
citizen. Helping the police with their enquiries.’

Mr Blake squinted at him. He was having trouble focusing.

‘I still don’t understand why I’m here. What have I done
exactly? What grounds have you arrested me on? I’ve been here almost
twenty-four hours!’

Without knowing it, Mr Blake was asking a very good question.
Posie felt Inspector Lovelace’s unease. By law he only had another twelve hours
to hold Mr Blake in custody, unless he charged Blake with something concrete.
And there was nothing really to charge him with, so he was probably going to
have to let him walk free. Inspector Lovelace remained calm, however, crossing
his arms authoritatively:

‘
Withholding evidence
. That’s the official charge,
anyway. But it doesn’t look good for you, Blake, let me tell you. We picked you
up at the
La Luna
club last night, where the body of one of your theatre
employees was found murdered, and another employee was murdered only two days
ago in strange circumstances. How do I know you’re not somehow responsible for
both murders? I’m looking into it now, investigating the evidence. Chances are
you’ll hang for this, Blake. I’ve got another missing girl on the cards as well
– your Wardrobe Mistress, Dolly Price – remember her? If she turns up murdered
too it’s likely going to be the final nail in your coffin.’

‘Murder?’ yelped Blake, swaying slightly, growing visibly
paler, if that were possible. ‘Hanging? But I had nothing to do with Georgie’s
death, I swear it. First I knew of it was last night, on the way here in the
police van. And as for Le Merle…that was damned inconvenient, let me tell you,
when he went missing. Nearly had to shut the theatre down that night. It was
awful! That would have been a real failure. I love that place…’

‘Well, it’s closed down now all right. Dead as a dodo. I’ve
got most of your employees sitting here in the cells. So there won’t be any
shows on at the Athenaeum Theatre for quite some time.’

At this news Blake gasped, his face genuinely
grief-stricken. Inspector Lovelace got up to go, gathering his hat and umbrella
together. ‘Well, if that’s it? I’ll be off.’

‘No, no. Wait. I’ll help you. But I’m no murderer. Not
really much of a Theatre Manager really. What is it you want to know exactly?’

Inspector Lovelace sat down again heavily. He nodded, and
pretended to consult a list in his fob-book.

‘Now you’re talking sense. We already know about the
international diamond smuggling ring, and the counterfeit money production…’
The Inspector said all of this in a blasé manner, ticking it off his imaginary
list. Posie watched as Blake’s jaw literally dropped open.

‘So there’s probably not much you can add. Or is there?’

Blake spread his hands in front of him as if to ward off
traffic, and started gabbling fast:

‘I swear, Inspector, I had nothing to do with any of
that
malarkey. I’m just a regular London lad, I never got mixed up in planning any
of that caboodle, nor my cousin Reggie, either. It was always my fancy to run a
theatre, and it seemed my dream came true at last, last year…when I was given
the chance…’

‘How did you meet your employer? Count della Rosa, isn’t
it?’

The very name seemed to change the atmosphere in the room,
and Posie saw Blake nervously licking his lips. He nodded.

‘I met him at a casino, I forget which one now. Somewhere in
Holborn, I think. I’d been down on my luck all night and I’d lost all I had. I
owed a pretty penny. I’d been hitting the sauce badly too. I was in a terrible
state when the Count turned up, seemingly out of nowhere. He paid off all my
gambling debts in one go and bought me a drink. He said he had a proposition
for me.’

‘Go on.’

‘He seemed to know all about me; about my cousin Reggie too.
Reggie had debts n’all. It was almost spooky, you know? As if he’d been
following me, watching me. I learnt later that’s what he’s best at, knowing
things about people: finding your weaknesses, knowing your secrets.’

Posie felt cold all over.

‘He said he knew I loved the theatre. He told me he’d just
acquired the lease on the Athenaeum Theatre in Piccadilly, and he needed a nice
solid English Manager and a Manager’s Assistant to run it for him. He said it
would be a piece of cake. Almost the whole lot of them were coming from abroad;
the best of the best
, he said. Crème de la crème, he said.’

‘That must have sounded tempting,’ remarked the Inspector
soothingly, privately thinking how naïve Mr Blake must be.

‘It was. A great fat salary would be paid to me and only a
couple of last-minute things needed to be sorted out; a new Wardrobe Mistress
was needed and a couple of fresh stage-hands, too. Nothing I couldn’t sort out
in a trice. So I accepted willingly.’

‘And it was all it was cracked up to be?’ asked the
Inspector in a friendly manner.

‘At first,’ nodded Blake. ‘But after a while I realised it
was fishy as hell. Nothing was what it seemed. The theatre was just a way to
keep his gang working together legitimately in London. I mean, who’s going to
question a bunch of foreign dancers and musicians if they come and go
sometimes? And the whole lot of them were scared of the Count. I noticed people
looked in terror at him out of the corner of their eyes whenever he came past.
That’s when I realised he must have
something
on everybody there, that
everybody there owed him in some way, people with shady pasts... I’m not saying
he was blackmailing them, but he got his pound of flesh…’

‘You mean at the
La Luna
club?’

Blake nodded. ‘It met at his say-so, usually once a month
when there was absolutely no moon. It was his little joke: the
La Luna
club didn’t really exist, legally or publicly; so it could only run on nights
when the real moon didn’t exist, either. He had people, spies, stretched all
across London, telling people to come at the right time; celebrities, famous
people, fashionable young folk. It was amazing. But it was all a cover for the
diamond merchants he knew, to come and go and make their selection of whatever
he had brought in that month.’

‘A risky business, I’d say,’ remarked the Inspector drily.

‘Yes,’ nodded Blake in agreement. ‘But the Count told me it
was part and parcel of my duties at the Athenaeum. I just helped out, transport
and the like…acting as a sort of glorified bouncer. A caretaker, if you will. I
wasn’t in a position to argue.’

The Inspector changed tack. ‘What about Lionel Le Merle and
Lucky Lucy, sorry,
Georgie le Pomme
…what was the deal there? Did they
know each other well?’

‘They were thick as thieves. Boon travel companions. The
theatre was closed once a week on a Sunday, and that’s when they would take off
together, go on a little jaunt to Antwerp. They were both from somewhere out
there originally, by all accounts. I’d know they’d been away together because
they’d bring back these little foreign cakes and share them out on the Monday
night, and that’s also when the Count was at his happiest…they were his best
pair of runners, you see? I thought it was drugs at first; I only found out
about the diamonds later.’

‘Were they involved romantically?’ asked Inspector Lovelace.

Blake roared with laughter. ‘Not on your nelly!’

He grinned. ‘Lionel Le Merle was old enough to be Georgie’s
father, her grandfather even! And I think that was the secret to their success:
they hammed it up for the customs officers, pretending to be a
father-and-daughter theatrical pair. Besides, the Count wouldn’t have let
anyone come between himself and Georgie. She was
his
.’

‘What do you mean?’ Posie watched as the Inspector seemed to
tense up, every nerve and muscle twitching.

‘Georgie and the Count were an item. Lovers. Crazy about
each other, they were. Inseparable. Not married as far as I know, but as good
as. The Count was jealous if someone even so much as looked at Georgie twice
over. Obsessed.’

‘So he can’t have thought much of her running off with Lord
Cardigeon to the Ritz Hotel then, can he?’ the Inspector said, shrewdly. ‘Maybe
that was the motive for her murder? Pure and simple jealousy?’

Blake shrugged.

‘I can’t help you with what he felt, Inspector. But I
can
tell you that the stealing of the black diamond from Lord Cardigeon was the
Count’s idea, and it was very much pre-arranged. From what I understand, the
Count knew it was locked away in a safe somewhere by the Cardigeon family,
untouched.Well, one night he got to drinking in a pub with some young fellows
(as I said, he makes it his business to find out about a person, their habits
and such like) and they just happened to be some of Lord Cardigeon’s friends.’

‘Go on.’

‘A simple story. He offered them a wad of money if they’d
give young Cardigeon a pair of tickets to the show at the theatre the next
night. And he set up Georgie le Pomme to be the bait. He knew it was a
certainty that the young Lord would go crazy for Georgie. Every man lost his
heart over that gal soon as he set eyes on her.’

‘You’re telling me she was a deliberate honey-trap?’

Blake nodded. ‘That’s about right. I was told she’d be away
from the theatre for a couple of weeks and to organise another dancer in her
place. I suppose they thought that two weeks was long enough for her to get
hold of that black diamond.’

Posie sagged a little at the window and sat down in a chair.
She had always felt sorry for Rufus in all of this, but the pre-meditation
behind the scale of the thing was unbelievable. In her mind she was drawn back
to the folder of cuttings Inspector Oats had shown her earlier today, the many
schemes and deceptions the girl had been involved in over the years, and she
found herself asking the same question she had earlier:
For such a clever
girl, what had gone wrong this time?

‘So, what happened?’ asked Inspector Lovelace, voicing her
own thoughts.

Blake shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. I guess her time was up. She
just needed to make her escape from the young Lord and bring the gemstone back
to the Count.’

‘But something went wrong?’

‘I don’t know. I wasn’t told anything. It must have gone
wrong. I’m guessing Le Merle, her old travelling companion, was sent in to find
her, to remind her of their usual arrangement; their team-work, the need to
come back to the Count. But something had changed for Georgie. Perhaps she had
decided to strike out on her own at last? Perhaps Le Merle just got in her
way…so she shot him. Of course, that’s just what
I
think.’

Inspector Lovelace was noting all of this down, nodding and
grimacing all the while.

Posie felt a sense of relief. At last the threads of the
story were coming together, and Rufus would soon be proved to have nothing
whatsoever to do with this ridiculous crime. But the relief was tempered by the
knowledge that although Mr Blake’s opinions were useful, and probable, they
weren’t exactly going to be admissible as evidence in Court.

She was aware of the Inspector’s voice continuing in the
interview room, but her thoughts were drifting miles away, in a frantic
colourful blur of images. Could it be that a hardened, seasoned professional
like Lucky Lucy had fallen victim to the famous charms (or curse) of the
Maharajah diamond? Had
she
too
wanted to possess it all for
herself?

‘Who do you think killed the girl? If she double-crossed the
Count, and she was found dead in his nightclub, it would seem he is the main
suspect. Agree?’

Mr Blake shook his head resolutely.

‘Not on your life. He’d never have killed that girl. Not in
a million years. He loved her too much. Look somewhere else. He’s not your
man.’

The Inspector noted this down.

‘One last thing, Mr Blake. Your employer is proving a devil
to track down. Can you help me at all?’

Blake shook his head, his blood-shot eyes blinking furiously
to stay awake.

‘Sorry Inspector. He’s a man of mystery. Likes to keep it
that way. I only really saw him at the theatre and in the
La Luna
.’

Inspector Lovelace was leaving the interview room.

‘I say,’ Posie heard Blake saying, calling out after the
Inspector hopefully. 

‘Have you got any more of whatever was in that thermos
flask? It was jolly good.’

****

Thursday 17th February, 1921

Eighteen

Looking back later, Posie would not be able to put her
finger on the reason
why
she had woken up so confoundedly early. All she
could say was that she was aware of some clear and present danger close at
hand.

The pearly grey morning light was stealing into her
bed-sitting room. There was no sound at all, and the silence was extraordinary.
Posie reached for her bedside clock, whose luminous hands showed it was just
before six o’clock. Getting up, she felt a horrible trepidation take over her,
and something propelled her over to the window, compelled her to pull back the
thin gingham curtains and look out at the dawn.

Nightingale Mews was empty, and misty puffs of frozen white
fog were floating eerily past in clumps. The street lamp directly opposite her
window was still on, flickering slightly. And then, through the tatters of
swirling mist, just a few feet away from her across the cobblestones, she saw
clearly what she had feared since the case had started: she was being watched.

A man, stationary under the lamplight, was carefully
observing her.

Posie gulped as the mist encircled him. It wasn’t her police
escort from the night before, of that she was sure. He had escorted her home
and then left again: keeping watch over her from dawn onwards was not in his
brief.

The man became clear for an instant again: an unfamiliar
figure with a black bowler hat pulled down low to cover his face, a black
overcoat, shining black shoes and then…

…
what on earth was that?

Posie leant in as close as she could. Something small was
pulling on a lead, a bright red lead, attached to the man’s black-gloved hand.
It was a small dog, more like a rat really, the sort fashionable women bought
to carry in their purses when they didn’t get enough attention from their
husbands. It was straining hard at the red lead, prancing on its tip-toes. As
if it were unused to being trapped in such a fashion…

Then she saw it clearly for a second and her heart missed a
beat: it was unmistakeably Mr Minks! On a lead! With some terrible captor!

Without thinking she grabbed her coat and flung it over the
top of her thick flannelette pyjamas, cramming her feet into her slippers. She
hurled herself out of the room, down the stairs and through the front door…out
into the cobbled street and the icy dawn fog. The cold hit her like a physical
blow and she reeled, teeth chattering, looking frantically this way and that.
But the man in black and Mr Minks had gone.

One end of Nightingale Mews was a dead end, so Posie
automatically turned left, running as fast as she could in her slippers over
the icy cobbles, out under the stone arch of the Mews entrance. She ran onto
the busy Cromwell Road, with its sweep of grand museums and its busy parade of
shops and cafés crammed tightly together along the pavement.

‘Bring him back, you coward!’

Posie was screaming hoarsely into the frozen air, but
fortunately nothing was yet open, and no-one saw her scurrying along like a
madwoman, shouting wildly at someone who might or might not have been ahead of
her there in the mist.

Out of breath, her slippers sodden through and her bare feet
freezing, Posie came to a halt opposite the grey turrety splendour of the
Victoria & Albert Museum. She bent doubled-up by a street lamp, trying to
get her breath back, half-sobbing, half-panting, struck by the sheer
uselessness of it all.

She turned homewards with a heavy heart, so she could begin
her day over for the second time, aware that finding Mr Minks was only the very
tip of what seemed like a great, dark, insurmountable iceberg.

****

It was extravagant in the extreme, she knew, but she didn’t
care. Posie ran the chipped enamel bath with the lion’s paw feet almost to the
brim with hot water and poured in a whole packet of floral bath salts from
Harrods.

As she lay back soaking in the delicious perfumed water,
thawing her feet out, trying to stop shivering, trying to calm herself down,
she heard Mrs Rapier, her landlady, out on the landing, making snide remarks
about how
some people
were incredibly selfish and had no manners, using
up all the hot water, and
how early
it was in the morning too to have a
bath – the pipes clanking had fair woken her up – and it was not yet
six-thirty! Posie ducked her head under the water, drowning out the bleats and
moans.

Dressing carefully and warmly in many layers, Posie left the
house as quickly as possible so as to avoid Mrs Rapier and her further catty
remarks. She pulled the front door behind her as quietly as possible and set
off. Surprisingly, given the butterflies in her stomach which refused to go
away, Posie found she was starving.

She bought herself a hot-buttered bacon roll at the corner
of Brompton Cross before boarding an almost empty bus trundling towards
Victoria. Eating hungrily, she watched the sky lighten above her to an arc of
pale streaky blue, rippled through with a strange golden-bronze sunlight. She
watched London coming to life all around her, fascinated as ever by the
hundreds and thousands of different lives and stories being played out as she
sped along, each and every one with a different outcome. Posie crumpled her
greasy napkin.

What would be the outcome of
her
day? Everything
seemed to be spiralling horribly out of control.

The chimes of Big Ben at Westminster could be heard as they
swerved past Buckingham Palace.

It was just gone seven o’clock.

****

Scotland Yard was very quiet, just stirring into life,
and Posie was informed that Inspector Lovelace was not yet in.

Posie ignored the sleepy-eyed policeman in Reception, keen
to be off his long night-shift, who called uselessly for her to stop as she
barged on down the dark corridors in the direction of the Inspector’s office.
She was relieved to find Sergeant Rainbird was already in, bustling about with
a mug in his hand. He simply nodded at her as if he had somehow expected her to
appear, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary.

‘What’s new? Any progress?’ she asked.

He shook his head in response and propped himself against
the Inspector’s desk in a nonchalant manner. He started rifling through the
wire basket on the edge of the desk, marked ‘INCOMING MAIL’. There seemed to be
nothing of any importance there, just paper flyers; coupons and police
circulars and the like.

A smartly dressed police post-boy popped his head around the
door.

‘Word from Inspector Lovelace. He’s running late. Held up in
a meeting with the Commissioner. Inspector Oats, too. You’re to open the
morning mail.’

Rainbird looked delighted and seized upon the thick package
of papers the post-boy handed over and started ripping the envelopes open.
Posie held her breath; there was something she was after in particular, but
Rainbird was frustratingly heaping the opened mail all together, as if
according it equal importance. He was about halfway through when he looked up
at Posie suddenly.

‘What you after exactly, Miss? Tell me. Put us both out of
our misery.’

‘Information from the Land Registry.’ She smiled
encouragingly. ‘Please?’

Rainbird scowled, flipping through the remaining unopened
papers. He passed her an envelope bearing an official-looking embossed seal.
She pulled out the flimsy pink paper it contained.

‘And?’

It was short. She read aloud:

LEASE
GRANTED
Property: Athenaeum Theatre, Piccadilly, London.
Lessee: Poulet Productions Limited. (Care of:
CC
, No 11, St
James, Pall Mall, London.)

‘Poulet Productions?’ echoed Sergeant Rainbird in
mixed tones of incredulity and wonder. ‘
What on earth
? Who are they? I
thought we were expecting this Count chappie to be on the paperwork? Doesn’t
everyone refer to him as the owner of the place?’

Posie nodded. She chewed her lip thoughtfully and sat down
on the chair nearest the desk. Silence hung uncomfortably between them.

‘Does the Count really exist?’ asked Rainbird bluntly after
a long pause.

‘Oh, he exists all right. It’s just he’s very careful,
that’s all. We’ll be lucky if we find his name on a single piece of paper in
the whole of London. He wraps himself up in layers and layers of protection so
no-one can get at him. And
this
…’ Posie waved the pink paper to make her
point, ‘…proves just how careful he is. But he’s not as clever as he thinks he
is. Look at the contact address! He’s let himself down there.’

Rainbird rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

‘But our lads have been to No 11, St James already. It was a
dead end.’

‘Well,’ said Posie insistently, ‘You’re forgetting
I
saw him there myself; mincing about as if he owned the place. There
must
be a link.’

She jabbed at the pink paper. ‘But just who or what exactly
is this “
CC
” referred to in the contact address? Could it be
C
ount
C
aspian?’

She held it accusingly under Rainbird’s nose, as if he
should know the answer. He shrugged and tipped the last of the opened letters
into the wire basket for Inspector Lovelace’s attention later. ‘Beats me…’

‘Only one thing for it, Sergeant. We’ll have to get over to
No 11, St James again and ask them about Poulet Productions, and just who this
“
CC
”
really is.’

She folded the pink paper decisively in half and put it in
her carpet bag.

It was then that she looked over to the wire basket, now
full to bursting with the morning’s mail.

Something shiny caught her eye, poking out from beneath the
various papers. It was the edge of a press-photo.

‘Oh, I say! That must be the photo in from the Belgian
police! Can I take a look…?’ But Posie didn’t wait for Rainbird’s answer and
pulled the photograph carefully free.

She angled the green-glassed reading lamp onto it and then
gasped aloud.

‘What is it, Miss?’

Posie was staring at the photo, dumbfounded.

‘I said, what is it, Miss?’

She came back to earth with a bang.

‘Finally we might have a break; finally, he’s been caught
out. On camera. Look at this! It’s going to help us.’

****