The Detective Wore Silk Drawers (13 page)

And then for everyone’s ears, brandishing a claret bottle, “Whatever the fancy think of tomorrow’s set-to, gentlemen, they’ll be in no doubt about the quality of the assistance Jago receives. There ain’t a more practised bottleholder than Edmund Vibart in the south of England!”

Beckett, too, was in high spirits when he rejoined them fifteen minutes later, rubbing his hands. “I’ll have a neat whisky now, if you please, Mr. Vibart, and drink to the success of our arrangement. Your sister-in-law drives a hard bargain, but I’ve paid in full and everything’s settled. We call you Quinton from now on, Jago—” He stopped suddenly.

“Where’s Morgan? Where the hell is Morgan?”

“Collecting some of ’is toggery from the gym,” Foster told him, as if he actually believed it.

“Ah, is that so? Well, he’s not necessary to our last item of business. The time and place, gentlemen, the time and place. Now let’s say this at the outset. We want no trouble from the police. They’ve queered too many pitches in the last year or two by getting wind of a fight before it takes place. So I’ve made it known that we’ve settled on Surrey and I hope it’s reached the law’s ears, for now I’d like to propose that we set up stakes in Kent—out Tunbridge Wells way. There’s a fast train out from London Bridge at noon.

We can put up there for a handsome lunch and then hire ourselves some swell carriages and pairs to take us into the country in style. Then Jago here—sorry, Quinton—and Morgan can have their good old-fashioned mill with the raw ’uns, while half the blues in Surrey are wearing out shoe leather looking for ’em.”

“It sounds a capital arrangement to me,” said Vibart enthusiastically.

Jago was thinking of Sergeant Cribb. “What about the onlookers—the fancy and the bookies? How will they know we’re not contesting the fight in Surrey?”

“They won’t—until about eleven tomorrow morning, when I let slip the word,” Beckett explained. “That’s early enough for the needle-pointed division. Every fighting pub in the East End will know within the hour. Are we agreed, then?”

“Entirely,” said Vibart after a nod from D’Estin.

Beckett stood, holding his glass high. “A toast to twenty-six sledge-hammering rounds at Tunbridge Wells, then.”

Jago sipped at his ginger beer, somewhat relieved that the Ebony had not been there to hear the toast. In fact it was some ten minutes before Sylvanus did return, and then he confounded everyone by having with him a bundle wrapped in a bathrobe that Jago remembered seeing in the gym.

“What have you got there, Morgan—Mrs. Vibart’s silver collection?” quipped Beckett. “We’d better get you away, man, before they loose the dogs on you. He’s scared of your dogs, you know, Vibart. He wouldn’t think of leaving Radstock Hall by night.”

“He’s wise,” said Vibart. “But don’t concern yourselves, gentlemen. While the gates are open, as they are tonight, we keep the dogs locked up. When your carriage has left, I shall unleash them. In fact, I should be grateful to join you as far as the gate.”

Outside, the warmth of the day lingered, although it was approaching eleven. The four men settled themselves in the carriage, Foster taking the reins.

“Remember, Jago,” Beckett called through the darkness.

“Twenty-five times you come to scratch. Leave the rest to Morgan.”

Foster laughed uproariously and cracked the whip. Long after the shape of the carriage was lost against the trees, his cackles could be heard above the grating wheels.

D’Estin nudged Jago’s arm. “Nervous? Let’s have a game of billiards. You’ll sleep all the better for it.”

CHAPTER

13

D’ESTIN WAS RIGHT. RETIRING SHORTLY BEFORE MIDNIGHT, Jago settled quickly into untroubled sleep and woke much refreshed to sunshine and the colloquy of the rook community on his side of the house: no melodious awakening, but preferable to the squeak and trundle of handcarts and carriage wheels outside his lodgings at Palace Place. There had always been a rookery at home, at Chapeldurham; with his eyes trained on the ceiling, it was amusing how graphically the carving revived early memories. Each one in a line of three nannies was available for recall with her distinctive morning ritual: cold bath with coal-tar soap; wrestling match under the quilt; and rhubarb pills and stretching exercises.

He had been fully awake for perhaps three minutes when the second sound invaded his consciousness. It had not been there on other mornings—a persistent ululation, drowned at times by the clamour from the rooks, but continuing at its own level. A sound uncharacteristic of any bird or animal he knew, but certainly not of human origin. If only their racket would stop for a minute, he might distinguish some recognizable cadence. In exasperation he threw back the bedding, walked to the window and pulled up the lower casement.

Then he leaned out to catch the sound more acutely.

The source was clear at once. Some forty yards to his left, on the lawn adjacent to the billiard room and the gymnasium wing, were two huge dogs, Irish wolfhounds, the nocturnal guards of Radstock Hall. They stood facing the main block, rooted apparently to one small area of lawn, sometimes backing a few steps and then recovering the ground, straining to lift their muzzles to the maximum elevation, and all the time maintaining a series of melancholy howls that combined to make the weird monotone Jago had heard.

He watched them in mystification; this was no part of their routine. Once or twice each night he would hear them baying as they patrolled the woods, but by dawn they always returned to the lodge, waiting to be readmitted and fed.

One of the dogs appeared to have seen Jago, for it turned to direct its howling at him. But it made no attempt to approach. The small area of grass which they chose to regard as their pound was clearly defined by their prints in the dew; they must have been there for an hour at least. Yet there was nothing within the patch that he could see—no dead rabbit or resisting hedgehog—to detain them. In its agitation one of the dogs began rearing on its hind legs, and it was then Jago realized their howls were directed at an upper window of the house, the fourth away from his: Isabel’s.

He came away from the window, drawing it down to deaden the sound and allow him to consider what to do.

Dogs were not rational creatures and it was possible that their alarming behaviour was due to some trick of light or scent, or that some canine disorder had affected them. They were trained guard dogs, however, and it could be that they had trailed a genuine scent to the point where they could no longer follow. Some intruder might have scaled the drainpipes under Isabel’s window.

Jago felt bound to check that she was safe. He decided to rouse Vibart; it would certainly not do to intrude on Isabel alone. Both Vibart and D’Estin slept in rooms on the south side of the house and could not possibly have seen the dogs, even if they had dimly heard them. He drew on his bathrobe and went quickly along the corridor past D’Estin’s door to Vibart’s room.

Vibart must have been deeply asleep. He came to the door at the fourth burst of knocking, slit-eyed and tousled.

“You? What in God’s name do you want at this confounded hour?”

“I think someone may have broken in.”

“Broken in? Burglar, you mean?”

“I don’t know,” said Jago. “The dogs—”

“The bloody dogs!” exclaimed Vibart, his lower lip jutting forward in annoyance. “You come disturbing me because the bloody dogs are barking? Listen to me, Jago. If there is a damned burglar in the house, which I doubt, he won’t set foot outside it while those brutes are loose, so you can go back to bed and let him sweat it out downstairs or wherever he is till morning. If you want to apprehend him, you can do it on your own.

You’re trained to look after yourself, aren’t you?”

He was. He was also trained to cope with unco-operative members of the public. As Vibart drew back and slammed the door, Jago put his foot in the way. It was done so automatically that he forgot he was wearing neither shoes nor socks.

To his credit he made only a muted yell of pain, and the rest of the house slept on while he executed an impromptu entrechat. It was sufficient to hold Vibart’s attention while the initial pain subsided.

“Isabel,” Jago finally managed to say. “The dogs are barking outside her window. I think we should see that she’s all right.”

Without another word Vibart took down a dressing gown from the back of the door and led Jago along the corridor to Isabel’s suite. In that part of the house the noise made by the dogs was quite audible. It seemed inconceivable that she had not been disturbed by them herself.

Vibart knocked.

They waited.

A second knock.

“Possibly she can’t hear us knocking from the bedroom,”

Jago suggested.

Vibart turned the handle and they went into the first room of the suite, the sitting room. It was in perfect order.

“Isabel!” Vibart called. The plaint of the dogs must have drowned any reply. He knocked twice on the closed door of her bedroom. “Isabel!”

No reply.

He turned the handle of the door and peered in. Jago stood back.

From Vibart’s throat came a low moan, almost matching the chorus of the dogs. He closed the door, his face ashen.

“What is it?” said Jago.

Vibart lurched to a chair. With a movement of the head he indicated that Jago should look for himself.

He opened the door.

The section of the room opposite the casement window was lit by the near-silver sun, low-angled behind the elms outside. So before the total scene could make an impression, the eye was fixed by details, surfaces of cut glass and mother-of-pearl—powder jars and hair brushes on the dressing table—that scintillated through the full range of the spectrum. The brass work of the bedstead, too, was highlighted, so that it required a conscious focal effort to look beyond it to the dazzling ocean of bed linen and the island of almost dry blood in which Isabel Vibart lay.

Death had deprived her of one kind of beauty, but invested her with another. She lay across the sheets obliquely in a white embroidered night chemise torn from collar to waist, revealing a cluster of stab wounds in the region of the heart. They had bled heavily. Without its vanities, jewellery, hairpins, corsets, all-enveloping dress, her body was graced by a naturalness Jago had never seen in a woman. The pure sunlight glowing on the statuesque limbs—whyever did such beauty have to be concealed through life?—banished even the suggestion of immodesty.

Her deep-brown hair, loose and luxuriant, was drawn from her face to trail over the edge of the bed so that its ends touched the carpet. Near that point on the floor was a white peignoir trimmed with lace and ribbons. The murderer had used it to wipe the excess of blood from his hands and knife.

Jago felt himself trembling; whether from shock or anger, he did not know. Neither reaction was desirable in a policeman, and his training urged him to approach this situation professionally. But could one even begin to treat this as a “case,” a set of circumstances to be analyzed on deductive principles? His personal involvement, his revulsion at such violence, held him absolutely. Isabel was murdered, and until his brain could absorb that stupefying fact, it was no good playing at being a detective.

Vibart, re-entering the bedroom from behind Jago, broke through his reverie. “You can see why he did this.”

He was pointing to the open door of a small safe, set in the wall to their right. It was empty. The key was still in the lock.

“The money,” Vibart explained. “Beckett handed her five hundred pounds last night. Five hundred! What a price for Isabel’s life!”

“What do you mean?” Jago asked. “Are you saying you know who did this?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Morgan killed her. He hated her anyway, but he killed her for the money. He was out of the room last night for half an hour or more. Didn’t you see the bundle he brought back afterwards? There must have been blood on his clothes and hands. He wore the dressing gown to kill her and carried it away with him afterwards. Knife, money, bloodstained hands—they were all hidden in that bundle.”

Jago’s faculties were beginning now to function professionally. The situation, he realized, placed him in an appalling dilemma. He could admit at once to being a policeman and take command until a senior officer could be fetched; but that could expose and destroy Cribb’s entire investigation into the dead pugilists. Or he could continue in his masquerade, possibly gaining privileged information as the others reacted to the new circumstances; that, he well knew, might lead to an unanswerable investigation into his conduct as an officer. For the present, he would delay the decision.

“We must tell D’Estin,” he said. “Then one of us should go for the police.”

“The police?” repeated Vibart in disbelief. “You must be mad! Do you think they can help her now, coming here to turn the blasted place upside-down and bring us all into court?”

“I wasn’t thinking,” said Jago. “Those dogs outside—I can’t concentrate for their howling. Can you get them away from the house? I’ll rouse D’Estin.” He would gain time, perhaps fifteen minutes, while Vibart returned them to the lodge. Before he went to D’Estin, he would examine the room alone; that was exactly what he would do if he were a uniformed investigator.

“Very well,” said Vibart. “What got them into this state, do you think?”

“The smell of blood,” said Jago. “An open window.

Warm sun. Any hunting dog would have got the scent. Take them away at once, can’t you?”

“I’ll get some clothes on,” Vibart agreed, and went off to his room.

In his role as sleuth, Jago approached the bed and touched the largest bloodstain. It was practically dry.

Controlling his emotions now, he bent to examine the stab wounds. He was no expert, but they told him the murder weapon was broad-bladed, and had been thrust into the flesh with great force five times. There was also bruising on the throat and left shoulder, suggesting she had been held down by the nonstriking hand. Her hands were unmarked, the fingernails unbroken; she had not had a chance to fight.

He looked around the room. The silk dress she had worn the previous evening was hanging on the side of the wardrobe, the folds arranged to prevent creasing. On a painted satinwood chair nearby the other garments had been put to air, the underskirt draped across the arms, the corset, black like the rest, over the back. The stockings and garters lay unseparated near the boots on the floor, but it was clear enough from the arrangement of the rest that Isabel had not been disturbed before getting into bed. Nor had she got up to admit her murderer; even a woman as unreserved as she would have put her undergarments out of sight first.

He crossed to the safe. It was a small metal container, certainly large enough to have held a hundred five-pound notes. Earlier he would have dearly liked to examine its contents for the evidence Cribb required. Now it was quite empty.

Suddenly Jago turned in surprise. From outside, under the window, had come two reports. He darted to the sill and looked out. The two dogs lay motionless on the lawn.

Presently Vibart, carrying a gun, approached their great bodies with caution, holding it ready for a third shot.

“Why in God’s name did you do that?” Jago shouted down. He was incensed. Hadn’t there been enough meaningless violence already?

Vibart gave no answer until he was satisfied, by shifting the fallen bodies with his foot, that they were really dead.

“They were hers,” he shouted back. “There’s no sense in keeping them on now. They didn’t save her from Morgan, did they? Useless brutes. Better off dead.”

A movement behind Jago made him turn. D’Estin had entered the room and was standing facing the bed, shaking his head in incomprehension.

“I heard shooting,” he said. “But this . . .”

“I was coming to tell you,” Jago said. “Vibart and I found her a few minutes ago. He’s outside. He just shot the dogs with that gun he bought you. He must have awaked the entire household.”

“We must stop the servants’ finding out about this,” said D’Estin, collecting himself. “We want no questions— police—that sort of thing. We’ll settle the score in our own way. They emptied the safe, did they? One of those bastards who came last night did this. It was more than they could bear to part with five hundred, even when they stood to gain twice as much in the fight.” He came to the window.

“What’s that idiot going to do with the dogs?” He leaned out and shouted to Vibart. “Move them into the woodshed, man! We want no questions about this.”

“It must be six-thirty by now,” said Jago. “What time does Mrs. Gruber come to wake her?”

“Quarter to eight. She’ll be down in the kitchens by now.

Must have heard that halfwit shooting. He’ll have to tell her he was after game. Look, I’d better get the servants out of the way altogether. I’ll go down there now and tell ’em Isabel went off to London last night, and we’re off shortly, so that they can all take the weekend off.”

“That will sound very sudden,” cautioned Jago.

“You didn’t know Isabel. She was as liable to give them a day off at the drop of a hat as she was to keep ’em working hours after their time. They won’t think anything of it.”

“You ought to dress first then. There is time.”

D’Estin nodded and left. Jago became a policeman again and turned to the window to examine the sill. There was no sign of anyone having entered that way. As the pipes outside were arranged, the climb looked a more difficult feat than he had thought at first. The six feet of brickwork to be bridged between pipe and window was cleared of ivy and had no obvious footholds. Besides, the dogs would certainly have attacked anyone in the grounds at night. Vibart’s supposition that the Ebony was responsible and had taken all the evidence away in the four-wheeler seemed the best explanation. Certainly the Negro had no regard for Isabel; anyone could see the simmering scorn in his eyes whenever she had spoken patronizingly to him.