Prince of Secrets (14 page)

Such matters were not a topic for the Fabians' breakfast table, nor did Cobie raise it on the journey home where Dinah sat demurely opposite to him in the corner of their reserved compartment. He did tell her of Sir Ratcliffe's demand for a retraction of Cobie's accusation of cheating.

‘You're not going to, are you?' she said, with a little shudder. ‘I never liked him, you know. I never liked the way in which he used to look at me when I visited Violet when I was a little girl. He's not so bad now, but I still can't feel happy in his presence.'

‘You have good antennae,' Cobie said, remembering what her father had suggested: that Dinah might be someone in whom you could safely confide.

‘What will he do if you don't retract?' she finally asked.

‘Sue,' said Cobie succinctly. ‘It's all that's left to him. He will be a fool to do so since he's bound to lose, but at least he'll have the pleasure of dragging the Prince of Wales into the witness box, thus handing him over to the Press. Me, too, I suppose. I can expect a writ any day now.'

It had been an accurate supposition. The writs flew two days after he and Dinah had arrived back in Park Lane.

Kenilworth arrived at Cobie's office within the hour. He had returned to town the moment he had received Sir Ratcliffe's letter demanding a retraction, which he had, of course, refused. Sir Ratcliffe was suing Lords Dagenham, Rainsborough and Kenilworth, and Mr Jacobus Grant, for slander. The Prince of Wales was to be called as a witness.

‘The man's a fool,' Kenilworth said dispassionately. ‘He cannot possibly win. Think how many of us saw him cheat, and all of us of good character, whereas his is dubious, to say the least. You know the Yard still thinks it possible that he stole his own necklace.'

Cobie nodded. ‘I suppose it's as good a theory as any. Has it been recovered?'

‘No, but that proves nothing,' Kenilworth returned shortly. ‘I suppose that all he wants to do is to make us deucedly unhappy, cause everyone a great deal of inconvenience, and muddy the Prince's reputation. I had Beauchamp around yesterday asking me if there was anything which could be done to salvage the whole business.

‘I told him what he already knew: only by retracting, and that would leave the Prince in a worse hole than ever. He wouldn't be dragged into court, but Heneage would soon let it be known that the Prince had connived at his name being blackened by supporting those who accused him, and then, when threatened with a lawsuit, all the accusers withdrew. Imagine what that would do to the Prince's reputation.'

Cobie had already worked that one out. He asked, ‘How long?'

‘The lawsuit, you mean? Fairly soon, I expect. He'll want to get at us, and what slim chance he has of winning will mean that if he does, he won't have been a pariah long.'

Cobie was short. ‘He'll always be a pariah. There's more to blacken him than this accusation.'

Kenilworth shrugged his shoulders. ‘You mean the hints about his other goings-on? That he was lucky not to be caught the night Madame Louise's was raided? That's all gossip and hearsay. But you're right. He'll never be received again in any house which matters, however the verdict goes. The mob will probably cheer him, though. He's just the sort of dubious swine they love.'

If I don't corner him first, Cobie thought. There had been a note waiting for him from Porter saying that he had information for Mr Grant, but would be out of town until Friday when he would wait upon him at his City office some time during the morning.

He was sorry not to be able to be more exact. In the mean time he would leave this short note for Mr Grant at his office, for him to peruse before their meeting. Cobie particularly liked the word peruse. It had overtones of Louis Fabian and the logic chopping of academia. There were times when he wished he had gone in that direction as his parents had hoped.

After commiserating earlier with Kenilworth over Heneage's stupid intransigence, he agreed with Hendrick Van Deusen when he came for afternoon tea—a ritual which the Professor enjoyed—that it was surprising that the man should be fool enough to want to spread his humiliation over the public prints.

‘Pity we're not still in the Territory,' Hendrick commented drily to Cobie when Dinah was occupied with the Bellenger Hodsons who had also called. ‘We could have settled his hash in an afternoon, and no inquests afterwards. Civilisation often depresses, as well as bores, me!'

Cobie was thinking of that, and of his own private agreement with the Professor when he reached his office on the Friday morning. Back in the Territory he would have made sure after Lizzie's death that Heneage would never have another opportunity to maim and kill small girls.

He re-read Porter's letter with interest. ‘I have some useful information to follow up for you, which might settle our man's hash for good,' he wrote. ‘You may have read of yet another child murder in the Press. I believe that our man was involved, with at least one of the names you gave me. I will not say more until I bring you some hard evidence on Friday morning. Confidentiality is all in our business.'

So confidential that the morning came and went, but no Porter appeared to pass on his news. Nor did he appear that afternoon. Five o'clock arrived, and still no Porter.

Cobie fetched out Porter's letter and read it yet again. There was no doubt about the appointed time and date. For no reason at all he felt uneasy. Three murders had been committed, and the man who had committed them, and his accomplices, had every reason to try to do away with anyone who might be able to connect them with their crimes.

He read the address on the letter, a street in a respectable part of Clapham, not far from the Common. His intuition rarely let him down. It led him to take the Clapham omnibus, regardless of the lateness of the hour, and what Dinah might think if he were late home. She knew his comings and goings were inclined to be erratic.

He reached Porter's home and knocked on the green-painted front door. It was opened by a middle-aged woman wearing an apron. She had been pretty and was still attractive. She stared at Cobie. He was wearing a shabby overcoat over his sartorial splendour, but nothing could hide the beauty of his face and body. Such rare creatures were seldom seen on Porter's doorstep.

Mrs Porter bobbed a curtsy like the lady's maid she had once been.

‘What can I do for you, sir?' she asked.

‘You must forgive me for intruding on your husband's private life, but I would like to speak to him if I may.'

Her whole face disintegrated. ‘Are you the gentleman he was doing the job for?' She didn't wait for his reply. ‘Oh, sir, I'm afeared. He hasn't been home these four nights, and that's not like him, not like him at all. He said he had enquiries to make out of town and would be back three days ago at the latest, since he had further enquiries to follow up here.'

‘You've no idea where he went?'

She twisted her hands together frantically. ‘Oh, do come in, sir, don't stand in the street. It's not proper,' and she waved him down the small hall and into a neat little room.

‘You wanted to know where he went. That I don't know. He never tells me anything. Safer so, he says, though he did say that he didn't think this job was too dangerous if he kept his head. But he's never stayed away without a word to me before. He always sends me a postcard if he's delayed.'

Cobie was staring at a dead end of a nature which he didn't like. He said gently, ‘Have you been to the police? About the fact that he's missing, I mean.'

‘I don't think he'd like that, sir. But—' and her hands were writhing again ‘—I s'pose I ought to. Three days and nothing.'

‘He made an appointment to meet me this morning,' Cobie said, ‘but he never turned up. Nor did he cancel it. I think that you ought to go to the police, don't you?'

He didn't want to become involved with Scotland Yard, but this was too serious for his own wants to take precedence over common decency.

‘He was in the police, you know,' she said. ‘He left under a bit of a cloud. I don't think that they'd listen to me, probably tell me he'd run off with a tart—but he wouldn't, not my Jem.'

‘I believe you,' Cobie said. He made up his mind, wryly amused, thinking how often life compelled you to betray yourself, make you do things you would much rather not. ‘I'll go to Scotland Yard. I know one of the inspectors there.'

Mrs Porter brightened immediately. ‘Would you, sir? Would you, really? I don't like to put you to the trouble.'

‘No trouble,' he said, lying in his teeth, as appeared to be common with him these days. ‘No trouble at all.'

Walker was sitting glumly at his desk. Nothing seemed to be going right for him. First there was the matter of the Heneage diamonds which he was absolutely sure that bastard Grant, Horne, Dilley, or whatever he called himself, had stolen. He had had Sir Ratcliffe Heneage, Bart, howling at him only a few days ago that he knew that Grant had stolen the diamonds, damn him, and if Walker was worth his pay he would have proved he had before now.

Walker was inclined to agree with him, but the diamonds had disappeared as though they had never existed. If Grant had stolen them it would have been easy for him to bribe someone to recut them, and then put them on the market with the genuine sparklers which had come in from South Africa and which were helping to make him even richer than he already was.

Now there were these child murders. A new monster was stalking the East End, one as bad as the Ripper had been, and he would dearly like to find him and see him swing at the end of a rope. After examining three mutilated bodies he was quite prepared to play hangman himself.

He had no leads, none at all. The bodies might have dropped from heaven for all that they told the police surgeon and the coppers who examined the area in which they were found.

Walker sighed heavily. He could do with something really easy to solve which would also look spectacular so that those above him would say ‘good old Walker', and not ‘that idiot Walker' or worse.

He had reached this point in his musings when the door opened and Bates put his ugly face round it. ‘It's him, guv. He wants to see you. Do you want to see him?'

‘Him, Bates, him? Who the devil's him?'

‘You know, guv. Dilley, Horne, Grant. The magician. Dressed to kill. Says only you will do.'

‘Does he, indeed. And what I most want to do, is him. Now you've got me at it, Bates! Send him in before I have a fit.'

‘Right, guv. Yes, guv. This way Mr…Grant.'

Mr Dilley strolled in. Walker liked to think of him as Dilley. Cut him down to size a bit. Jacobus Grant, Esquire, was the friend of Princes, a Dollar Prince himself. Mr Dilley was a cheap magician who wore ill-fitting clothes and was nobody's friend.

Walker remained seated. He didn't leap up to bow and scrape as he should have done. ‘Well, what is it?' he said curtly. ‘Come to confess that you stole the Heneage diamonds, have you?'

‘What a lively mind you have, Inspector.' Cobie smiled, determined to extract pleasure from a situation—for once—not of his making. ‘Of course I haven't. I suppose that means you haven't traced them yet?'

‘Of course I haven't traced them,' snarled Walker, ‘seeing as how you had them recut the minute you got back to London. How much did you get for them? And for God's
sake, why did you need to steal them? They say you're worth billions, not millions.'

‘American billions,' corrected Cobie. ‘Not your sort. And there, Inspector, you've admitted it. Why should I steal them? You've ruined your own case. But this is time wasting. I've come about something entirely different.'

‘Oh, and what's that? More bribery of poverty-stricken policemen, or a few more fires set on Thames-side? You could try confessing to that while you're at it.'

‘If I knew what you were talking about… No, this is serious, and it concerns me, but only indirectly. It's a long story, Inspector, and one you ought to hear. I was perhaps remiss not to tell it to you before.'

He was still standing. The room was warm and he had slipped off his shabby great coat to reveal his beautifully cut suit, and his shoes from Lobbs. His elegancies made Walker's office seem dingier than ever.

‘For reasons I shall shortly explain to you, I am of the opinion that I know the identity of the man who is assaulting, mutilating and killing little girls. I understand that you are on this case, Inspector, correct me if I am wrong. I believe him to be Sir Ratcliffe Heneage, whose diamonds were stolen when he was staying at Markendale, but the diamonds are by the way…'

‘Not with me, they're not,' interjected Walker, ‘and why you should think that Heneage is the murderer is beyond me. I would sooner suspect your good self.'

Cobie's face assumed a cold severity which had Walker blinking, so unlike was it to his usually coolly charming and impassive mask.

‘You may remember,' he said, ignoring Walker's last remarks, ‘that I bribed you to raid Madame Louise's, and I told you that it was because I had rescued a child from there
after discovering that a trade in young boys and girls procured for sexual perversions was carried on by her.

‘The child I rescued was one intended for the use of Sir Ratcliffe Heneage at Madame Louise's. I saw him pursuing her before I spirited her away. I have reason to believe that later she was kidnapped for him to abuse, killed, and thrown into the Thames. The other two murders were also committed by him with the help of a pander and a pimp whom he is paying royally—God knows what with. I have no evidence to support this other than the verbal confession of a man who is now dead.'

He saw with satisfaction that he now had the close attention of both men in the room with him. Bates had said nothing other than to gasp when he had mentioned Sir Ratcliffe's name. Walker eyes were hard on him.