Sweet Poison (22 page)

‘But if she finds you . . .’

‘Don’t worry. I won’t say I have been talking to you. If she catches me I will just say I am a bit of an amateur burglar and she can be as rude to me as she likes, but in any case I won’t go in until I am sure she is not there.’

‘Bless you, Edward. I don’t know how to thank you. I just daren’t ask Joe. He would charge round like a bull in a china shop and she would probably never speak to either of us again.’

Hermione’s flat in Beauchamp Place was on the top floor. Getting no reply to his knocking, Edward unlocked the door and went in. There was no one and no sign of anyone having been there lately. There was no food on the table or in the little larder. The windows were closed and the rooms – a bedroom and a living-room along with a tiny kitchen and bathroom – were stuffy and dirty-smelling – neglected. This was clearly not a place for which the owner had any affection. There was a telephone book beside the telephone and he looked up Lomax’s number. He dialled but there was only a buzzing tone. The book gave an address in Fulham and he decided he would not sleep easy until he had gone round and made sure Hermione was not . . . was not held prisoner there or something worse. He felt he owed it to Blanche to find Hermione whatever the trouble it caused him. If he had looked after her and taken her away from that awful night-club maybe she might not have run off. Now he hardly dared think what she might have run off to.

When the cab dropped him at the house in Fulham the first thing he noticed was that the tiny garden in front of the house was little better than a rubbish tip. Here was another neglectful owner. Empty bottles, a broken dustbin, the twisted wheel of a bicycle cluttered the path up to the front door. Before opening the iron gate and going up to the door he stepped back across the street and gazed at the house. There was something desolate and even hostile about it. All the windows were blinded either by shabby-looking curtains or by what looked like blankets. It was a respectable street in an area convenient for Mr Lomax’s social life in Belgravia but the house itself looked as though it were hiding something nasty. As he stood there summoning up the energy to bang on the door, an elderly woman stepped out of the house at whose garden gate he was standing. In contrast to Mr Lomax’s residence, this little house was smart as two pins. The garden was ablaze with colour and the front door had been newly painted a startling electric blue.

‘You’ll not find anyone up there,’ she said, nodding towards the house opposite. ‘They go to bed goodness knows how late. I’m woken up in the night often enough with shouting and screaming and they never stir till three or four in the afternoon. It’s a disgrace to the neighbourhood, if you ask me. I’ve threatened to have the police on them but he just laughs.’

‘He?’

‘Mr Lomax, his name is. A bad ’un if ever I saw one.’

‘He has parties?’

‘Parties!’ The elderly lady raised her voice in disgust. ‘Orgies, I would call them. You’re not one of them?’

‘No,’ said Edward, ‘I’m not one of them, but I rather think he may have one of my friends in there and I intend to get her out.’

‘Oh my! Are you a policeman?’

‘Not a policeman, Mrs . . .’

‘Mrs Watson.’

‘Mrs Watson, no, I am not a policeman.’ He raised his hat to her and without more ado crossed the narrow street, pushed open the gate, which resisted his efforts with much creaking and groaning, and hammered on the front door.

There was no answer. He knocked again and there was still no answer. He was about to go away defeated when he thought he might as well walk round the back of the house. The knowledge that at least one pair of eyes was watching his every move from behind net curtains made the hairs on the back of his head prickle. If Mrs Watson decided to call the police then he had not much time. He was both highly reluctant to pursue his search for Hermione and at the same time eager to get it over with and find out what sordid little secrets this unpleasant-looking house might be guarding. The last thing he wanted was to be arrested for attempted burglary, but somehow he did not feel he could hold his head up if he went back to Lady Weaver with the tame news that he had knocked and there had been no answer so he had come away.

If the front garden of the house was disfigured with garbage, which it was, it would have won a best-kept-lawn award when compared with the back. Here the litter was ankle deep. A drain had overflowed and a stream of green slime had coagulated on the stone path, turning it into a potentially lethal skating rink. There was a nauseating stink from a pile of rubbish in one corner of the pocket-sized space which could not truly be called a back garden. Holding his handkerchief to his nose, Edward approached it and put the toe of his shoe against it. He recoiled quickly as a family of rats lurched across his feet. They had been feeding on the corpse of what might once have been a cat.

Turning to look at the back of the house, he noticed that though most of the windows were tightly closed and curtained one on the first floor was broken. He sighed. Here was a means of entry but it meant shinning up the drainpipe and that meant the trousers of his suit would certainly be ruined. Still, there was nothing to be done about it. He took off his hat and jacket and hung them carefully over the spout of a rusting watering-can. It was chilly and he shivered in his shirt-sleeves. He considered removing his tie but compromised by tucking the end of it between the buttons of his shirt as he had seen office workers do in New York. His shoes were strong walking shoes made for him at Lobb’s, not ideal for climbing up drainpipes but in this filth it was unthinkable that he should remove them.

His ascent began well. The drainpipe was slippery but he got a grip quite easily on the clammy metal. Edward Corinth was one of those fortunate young men who, though never seeming to take much exercise, remain fit. It had been three months since he had returned from South Africa but he still had the muscles he had hardened climbing in the Drakensberg. His tailor had remarked on how he would have to allow for them as he measured him for this very suit, the trousers of which he was now ruining. When he reached the broken window he was triumphant, but pride almost came before a fall. In recent years no one had spent one penny on the upkeep of the structure and the drainpipe had only been pretending to be firmly fixed to the wall of the house. It now revealed that its suitability as a ladder was illusory as it began to come away from the wall as easily as Edward might have peeled a banana. He clutched at the broken window, cutting himself as he did so on some jagged glass. He succeeded in heaving himself up so that his head was just above the window ledge. It was too dark to see more than that it was a bedroom of sorts. Certainly there was a heap of what might be bedclothes in one corner. He made a further effort and, sweating profusely, found a purchase for his right foot in the damaged brickwork. He fumbled for the window catch and found it, only to discover that the window swung outwards, and as it did so he once again almost fell on to the stone paving below. He caught himself in time and rolled his body over the sill, ripping his trousers. Panting hard, he found his feet in a small dank room which smelled of drains, or worse. He assumed the house must be empty: he had made such a noise getting in that he would have disturbed anyone who was awake and woken all but the deepest sleeper.

But he was wrong. The house was not empty. As he prepared to go out of the bedroom door to explore what lay beyond, the pile of bedclothes moved. A snorting sound like that made by a bulldog startled him. He wanted urgently to empty his bladder. He told himself to get a grip on his nerves and stop being a yellow-livered coward. He stepped over to the snuffling, moving blankets and pulled back the corner of the top one.

He had found Hermione. She was hardly recognizable. Her dress, the same one she had been wearing at the Cocoanut Grove, was torn and smeared with what looked like excrement. But it was her face which gave him the greatest shock. It was very red and the flesh was swollen, particularly around her eyes which were closed. He gently raised one of her eyelids. The eyeball had rolled upwards giving her a blind look which was quite shocking. Her hair was matted and she was getting her breath only with great difficulty. It was this snorting which had first alerted him that the pile of rags hid a living thing. Cursing, he ran down the stairs two steps at a time. He found a telephone in the hallway but it was not working. He opened the front door, breathing the fresh air with huge relief. He ran across the road to the electric-blue door and hammered on it, blistering the paintwork. Mrs Watson opened the door to him, white as a sheet.

‘What’s the matter?’ she cried, a hand at her throat. ‘Is someone dead?’

‘I have found my friend but she is very ill. I must use your telephone.’

‘I am afraid I don’t have one,’ Mrs Watson said apologetically. ‘Wait, my next-door neighbour does.’ In her slippers she ran outside and up the garden path of the next-door house. Her neighbour must have been disturbed by the commotion because she opened her door immediately.

‘Please – may I use your telephone? It’s an emergency,’ said Edward who had followed close on the old woman’s heels.

The lady seemed too amazed to say anything but indicated the instrument sitting on the hall table. He dialled 999 and summoned an ambulance. He hesitated for a moment and then rang Whitehall 1212 and asked to speak to Inspector Pride. Luck was with him; the Inspector was just on his way out. There was a minute’s wait while Edward drummed his fingers on the table and the two women stared at him. Then he heard the Inspector’s dry voice: ‘Yes, what is it?’

Inspector Pride listened silently to Edward’s story. ‘I’ll come at once,’ he said when he had finished.

Edward mumbled his thanks to the two women and returned to the house and to Hermione. Bravely, Mrs Watson came after him. She cried out when she saw Hermione. Between them, they tried to make the girl a little more comfortable but Edward was frightened of doing more harm than good by moving her. He went back down the stairs to listen for the ambulance. Then it struck him that there might be others in this ghastly house. He looked into a filthy kitchen and then went upstairs again. Mrs Watson was crouched beside Hermione murmuring comfort and stroking her hand. Edward walked out into the passage and opened another door. There was a second bedroom and a bathroom. Both were empty but there were signs that someone had used the rooms quite recently. He noticed a safety razor in a pool of soapy water on the washbasin in the bathroom and several used syringes. He went downstairs again and as he did so noticed a door which he had overlooked when he had been downstairs before. He opened it. It was a lavatory and sitting upon the lavatory bowl was a young man in evening dress. He had not taken off his coat or trousers and Edward guessed that he had gone into the lavatory to hide though the smell suggested that, deliberately or not, his bowels had opened. One thing was quite evident, Charlie Lomax would never need to sell dope again because a knife through his chest skewered him to the wall.

There was a sound of bells clanging as an ambulance and a police car arrived at the same time.

10

Monday Evening

‘How absolutely frightful,’ said Verity, pale of face. ‘Will she live?’

‘Touch and go,’ Edward answered. ‘Someone pumped her full of heroin and it will be a couple of days, apparently, before the doctors know.’

‘And her poor mother?’

‘She’s taken it hard, of course – won’t move from her bedside. Weaver’s been good too. He doesn’t pretend he got on with his stepdaughter but he definitely loves his wife and anything which hurts her, hurts him.’

‘That’s what makes it so odd about your girlfriend.’

‘What girlfriend?’

‘Amy Pageant. You had her down as Weaver’s mistress and every other capitalist tycoon I’m sure has a score of mistresses, but somehow – and I expect I’m being naïve – I don’t think Weaver would have one.’

‘You asked him?’ inquired Edward ironically.

‘Of course not, fool, but he treated me like a real person not like a power-hungry sex maniac. I mean, he patronized me but then all men do patronize women –’

‘I’ve never patronized you.’

‘You bloody well have and do,’ said Verity hotly.

Edward was a little taken aback by her language but even more so by the notion that he could ever be accused of patronizing anyone. ‘Look here, my dear –’ he began.

‘There you are,’ she chipped in triumphantly.

‘Where?’ he said, shaking his head in bewilderment.

‘Calling me “my dear”, idiot. I’m not your dear. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yes, I remember. I was saying Weaver patronized me but he seemed willing to admit I might be able to do my job, which was more than either the editor or the historian believed. He didn’t try that magnetic sexual power stuff on me.’

‘What’s wrong with “my dear”?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, do shut up and concentrate. And before you say it, I am not using my so-called feminine intuition or Freudian rubbish for that matter. I’m just saying he looks as though he’s one of the few men I know who genuinely loves his wife. Now, if it had been that awful Larmore man –’

‘You’ve never read Freud,’ said Edward.

‘There you go again – patronizing me,’ exclaimed Verity in exasperation. ‘Of course I have not read Freud but no need to assume it!’

‘Oh God, sorry. I apologize. But yes, you are right about Larmore. I agree, he is definitely a cad. I spoke to one or two friends who move in political circles and they all say he is absolutely untrustworthy. I thought I would go and see him after I’ve been back to the club.’

‘You mean the Cocoanut Jungle or whatever it’s called? Can I come too? You can’t go to a night-club on your own, you know. You would stick out like a sore thumb.’

‘Yes, I would like that,’ he said, careful not to sound patronizing.

‘Hasn’t Inspector Pride closed it down by now?’

‘No. I told him what I suspected and that I thought the dope came from there, but he says there’s no evidence and he can’t do anything until there is.’