Murder Offstage (5 page)

And in the strange muffled world of snow-covered London,
Posie started to imagine things.

For all the quietness surrounding her, she fancied she could
hear footsteps close by, clicking at her heels. It sounded like a man’s
brogues; totally unsuitable for the heavy snow. At one point she stopped
underneath a street lamp and turned around quickly to face her assailant.

‘Who’s there?’ she called loudly, trying not to let the fear
show in her words. ‘Who is it?’

There was no-one. At least no-one she could fathom, anyhow.

Trafalgar Square was up ahead, normally so welcoming with
its bright lights and its familiar stone lions. She hurried to reach it.

But even here the world had changed. The newspaper sellers
who normally thronged the place had packed up and gone, and the crowds of
party-goers who flocked to the square at night to drink champagne had gone
somewhere warmer.

Only a few poor wretches, soldiers who had survived the
Great War but with limbs or their wits missing, sat underneath damp cardboard
sheets, begging passers-by for money. Life had not been kind to them, and it
was a cruel shame.

Posie remembered the famous newspaper photographs of
Armistice Day in Trafalgar Square three years before, when the ghastly war had
been stopped forever. She hadn’t been there herself; she was still out in
action in the boggy fields of Amiens with the Ambulance Brigade, picking up the
debris and the bodies from the last few battles. But she knew that unimaginable
crowds had packed the place out. Men in their thousands had climbed on the
lions by the fountain and scaled Nelson’s Column, angrily ripping down the
placards inviting men to enlist.

Posie distributed the last of her coins among as many of the
men as she could and continued up the road until she hit Pall Mall.

It was strange. She still couldn’t shake off the feeling
that someone was following her and she found herself turning around several
times, heart thumping.

But there was never anyone there.

Ahead of her, up at Piccadilly, she saw the bright
blue-and-white electric lights of the Circus glittering like cat’s eyes through
the snow, and beyond it again, the bright lights of the Theatre District in the
distance. She tried not to think of Len and Babe, together…

And so she braced herself for her most thankless task yet of
the evening.

The Tenth Earl, Rufus’ father, was famously a man of few
manners. He reminded people of an unexploded volcano at the best of times.
Posie knew that he would be seething from Rufus’ exploits earlier today, and in
addition he would be tired from his long train journey down from his ancestral
home, Rebburn Abbey. On the whole it was not a great time to turn up and expect
his undivided attention. And if her telegram to the club had gone the same way
as Babe’s other two, Posie’s visit would be unexpected too. But visit him she
must: Rufus had asked her to.

The impossibly grand pale-yellow stone facades of the London
clubs stretched ahead down Pall Mall, one after another, lining the street as
far as the eye could see. Oil torches flickered at the entrance of each one.
They were the exclusive preserve of men, and only men of the better sort; you
were
born
a member, you could not
become
a member. These places
always reminded Posie of the Italian Palaces of the Renaissance; so serene
outside and yet so full of fearsome secrets inside.

Pall Mall this evening was indeed serene, with only a few
chauffeured cars and taxis waiting politely in the snowy shadows for their
aristocratic owners to emerge at any given hour. There was no sign now of the
hoards of women who had famously chained themselves to the iron railings here,
demanding the vote for women in 1914, before the Great War had come and changed
everything.

Posie found No 11 and turned in quickly.

And there it was again – that tap of brogues close behind
her, the soft cat-like stepping on snow, coming to a sudden halt a second too
late. Like an echo.

So, she hadn’t been mistaken. Someone
was
following
her.

She looked out into the street. The burning torchlights at
the club entrance blinded her, and beyond, on the street, all was pitch
darkness.

‘Who is it?’ she called out sharply, uselessly; her heart
hammering up into her throat.

No-one replied of course, but a sliver of shadow, just the
merest flicker of black, slipped past the entrance of No 11 and slithered into
the darkness beyond. Even now Posie knew that a pair of unknown eyes were
watching her, boring into her.

But why?

Posie stared numbly into the space where the shadow had
hidden, and just as she had decided that whoever it was had passed on into the
night, or on to trail more exciting quarry, a blinding flash of light pierced
the darkness, illuminating her in a white split-second on the stone steps.

A photographer’s lamp whirred in the background and she
could smell the chalky residue from the used flashbulb. Who on earth was
trailing her and taking pictures of her too?

Posie was more scared than she could remember. She ran up
the yellow stone steps and was begrudgingly whisked through the glass door by a
miserable-looking doorman in a top hat.

‘You can only go into the lobby, Miss,’ said the doorman
with a degree of smug satisfaction. ‘Women aren’t allowed beyond.’

‘I
do
know that,’ she snapped back, more tetchily
than she might have done in other circumstances.

Inside, the dimly lit entrance hall was empty, and closer
inspection revealed tall wood-panelled walls, bearing shelves full to bursting
of highly polished silver trophies and sporting cups. Brown-faded photographs
from the turn of the century were stuffed on every available surface. Posie
went over to the shelves and saw that most showed teams of cricketers posing on
the village greens of Kent and Surrey. The whole place reminded her of the
games room at her brother’s prep school when she had visited him there once. He
had proudly pointed himself out to her in just such a photograph: poor dead
Richard.

‘Can I help you, madam?’ asked an ancient-looking Butler,
shuffling in, disapproval and admiration flashing in equal measures across his
face. Disapproval won. She asked for the Earl of Cardigeon and watched as the
Butler moved off, looking nervous.

Posie realised suddenly that she was not entirely alone in
the lobby: a telephone booth at the very back on the left was occupied, and she
could just see the bottom half of a man’s black tuxedo-clad legs and shiny
black brogues below a green baize curtain. She listened hard but couldn’t make
out any actual conversation going on.

And to the right, behind a discreet wooden-topped counter, a
club servant had suddenly appeared, frantically making notes and sorting
telegrams into a hive of small pigeon-holes behind him.

A hidden door on the left swung open.

‘What’s this all about? And who the hell are you, anyway?
Damned interfering womenfolk! I thought I was free of you all in this place, at
least.’

Rufus’ father was clutching a glass of dark malt whisky and
he gave Posie a brutal, insolent stare. Short and toady-looking, he was still
wearing his country tweeds and had obviously been at the bottle for a good part
of the afternoon and evening. He was redder in the face, rougher and altogether
more rotund than when Posie had last met him as a child. She was relieved to
find that there was something slightly comical about him now though, rather
than scary. Probably to do with the fact that now she towered over him, rather
than the other way around.

Posie quickly explained who she was, and was rewarded by a
very slight thawing of the frostiness. The Earl nodded a pinch of recognition:
he had always approved of Posie’s brother Richard as being a steadying
influence on Rufus in the past, and now that Richard was dead he was, of
course, beyond reproach. Not like poor old Rufey.

‘I’m here to talk about Rufus. He’s in a great deal of
trouble,’ she whispered down into the Earl’s hairy ear. ‘Is there anywhere we
can talk here, sir, privately?’

‘No, of course not!’ the Earl bellowed. ‘You’re not allowed
anywhere past the entrance hall, anyway. Out of bounds. Say what you need to
here, girl.’

Posie sighed and indicated towards the man’s legs behind
them in the cubicle, and at the club servant bustling away with his papers in
the corner.

The Earl swatted the air dismissively as if attacking a fly.

‘No problem with those folk. Make it snappy.’

Posie talked hurriedly in as low a voice as possible.

She took the fateful telegram from Brigg & Brooks out of
her bag, and passed it to the Earl. She bit her lip as he read it. His face
went first white, then red and then redder. Posie thought he might be about to
explode. Or faint.

‘I thought you ought to know it was uninsured. I don’t think
Rufus got around to telling you.’

The Earl was rocking on his feet and Posie quickly clutched
a dark wicker ornamental chair. She hoped it was up to bearing his weight. He
slumped down into its delicate frame. He started to fan himself with the
crumpled telegram. Posie squatted down next to him.

‘There’s something else sir.’

The Earl groaned.

‘There’s a hearing tomorrow morning, at Scotland Yard. Rufus
needs you.’

The toady eyes looked at Posie for the first time with
something approaching hope, or at least indicating a smidgen of gratitude.

‘What does he need? A lawyer? I’ll get the best in town to
get my boy out of jail. Clear his name.’

Posie shook her head grimly: ‘I think they are happy for him
to leave jail, as long as he doesn’t leave London, sir. He’s still not
officially off the list of suspects for murder. It’s a bail hearing. They want
a bond.’

The Earl rubbed his eyes in tired, whisky-soaked disbelief.

‘How much?’

‘Five thousand pounds, sir.’

Posie stood up as the Earl started to rock to and fro on the
chair, judging it best to give him a little room for whatever reaction he might
spring. He reminded her a little of a nightmarish Rumpelstiltskin, about to go
up in a puff of smoke. Eventually, he got up and stared at Posie for a long,
hard moment as if this were all her fault.

She gulped, but fished in her bag again and brought out her
business card. It was small and neat with clipped square corners, and unlike Mr
Irving’s, she had made sure that the print was of a quality such that it would
never come off over your hands.

‘Take this, my Lord. You can find me at the address there. I
promised to help Rufus, and help him I will. I never break my promises. I will
clear his name, and try my best to get the missing item back for you, sir. I
already have a few leads in this case.’

(The extravagant truth.)

The Earl stuffed her card into one of his tweedy jacket
pockets without giving it a second glance.

‘What the hell can
you
do, girl?’ he barked at her
rudely. The Earl turned on his heel and made for the hidden door he had come
through. Just as it seemed he was about to disappear without even saying
goodbye, he turned and half-laughed over his shoulder:

‘You take my advice and stay well out of this mess. You know
that the wretched thing has a curse on it? Blights everyone it touches.’

Posie stood still for a moment after the door had slammed
shut in her face, thinking hard. She was just about to leave and brave the
night (and her possible stalker) when she heard an unfamiliar voice calling her
name softly across the lobby floor.

Mystified, she turned around. No-one else could possibly
know she was here.

The most handsome man she had seen in her life (after Len,
of course), was standing leaning by the telephone cubicle, one hand casually
holding the baize curtain aside. She recognised the smart tuxedo trousers, the
shoes. It was the man who had been on the telephone the whole time. Or at
least,
pretending
to be.

She raised an eyebrow.

The man walked across to her. He was lithe on his feet, and
he moved like a ballet dancer. He was about thirty, with a leonine head of
slicked-back black hair, worn slightly long about the neck.

‘Caspian della Rosa,’ he smiled, extending a white-gloved
hand, and Posie detected a slight foreign accent underneath his casually
assured tones. Behind him the club servant was fluttering very closely,
arranging papers on a tray: he didn’t look up once.

Poise took his hand gingerly. ‘Can I help you? You seem to
know my name.’

‘Yes,’ he murmured, not letting go of her hand.

‘Have a drink with me. It is still Valentine’s Day, after
all, and a beautiful girl like you should be out on the town. Funny how we
should meet here like this, is it not? Sometimes, you know, the most beautiful,
the rarest treasures in the world are to be found right under our very noses.
They need no guarding, no protection: they exist, fabulously, alone. You,
bella
,
are just such a creature.’

Caspian della Rosa did not take his eyes from her face once,
and Posie realised there was something slightly wolfish about him, dangerous
almost. When he smiled, his canine teeth, slightly too long for conventional
beauty, were revealed. His black eyes flashed fire, promising adventure. Posie
felt her heart skip a little faster for a second, and she allowed him a rare
smile, a flutter of her unpainted eyelashes.

‘Come with me,
bella
. You should not be chasing after
disgusting old men in clubs such as these, or searching for horrid old
diamonds. Let me take you to a little place I know.’

Posie froze. He had mentioned diamonds, but she knew very
well that in all of the whispered conversation with the Earl neither of them
had mentioned the word once. She had been careful not to do so. And anyway, how
on earth did this man know who she was? She had whispered her name under her
breath to the Earl. No, there was something far more sinister at play here than
just casual eavesdropping.