Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd (23 page)

N
OT FAR FROM
S
T.
Paul's Cathedral, the office of
The
Daily Telegraph
was in a part of the city flattened by the Blitz. Even after ten years, blackened bombsites still remained scattered round the church like rotting teeth in the mouth of some ancient duchess.

We stared out at the passing narrow streets, silenced at the sight.

With a sudden swerve to the curb, our driver pulled up with a jerk and stared at Mildred in his mirror, waiting for her to pay the fare.

“Thank you, Bert,” she said, handing him a couple of notes. “You are truly a pearl among cabbies.”

Bert fought to hold back radiance, then tipped his cap.

We paused for a moment on the pavement, looking up at
The Telegraph
's towering pillars.

“Designed by the same person who did the pylons for Sydney Harbor Bridge,” Mildred said with a sniff, and I nodded knowingly.

Inside, we asked directions and fought our way through hordes of people in a maze of brightly lighted corridors. The racket from regiments of typewriters and armies of shoes shuffling on marble was overwhelming.

“Here we are,” Mildred said, and tapped lightly with her knuckles on a glass-windowed door.

There was no answer.

She tapped again and then opened the door.

“Finbar Joyce?” she asked.

I had somehow imagined Finbar Joyce as an elderly, rumpled reporter in a reeking, wrinkled mackintosh with a cigarette in his mouth and a notebook and pencil clutched in his nicotine-stained fingers.

Instead, he turned out to be a large, youngish man in flannels, with an orange and blue silk cravat tucked into a creamy Fair Isle pullover. He looked more like a wealthy fisherman on holiday than a Fleet Street reporter. The only signs of dissipation were the faint red rims of his eyes and the curve of his belly, which reminded me of a sail full of wind.

“Mildred Bannerman,” Mildred said. “We spoke on the telephone.”

“Ah, beloved Miss Bannerman,” Finbar said, without getting up from behind his desk—without even looking, in fact. “The Inchbald affair.”

He waved us to a couple of criminally hard-looking wooden chairs.

“You knew him, I believe,” Mildred said.

“I reported on his death,” Finbar said. “I should hardly say I knew him, no. Rubbed elbows with the Great Man once or twice, perhaps, in the clubs. Raised a glass or two on small occasions. The world of books and newspapers is not a large one—quite the contrary to what you may think.”

Although he was speaking to Mildred, he was looking closely at me.

“This is my friend Flavia de Luce,” Mildred said.

“Ah! Sylvia Silence, the girl detective.” Finbar grinned. “I know you by reputation of course. Your fabled name has crossed this desk on more than one occasion. The Case of the Purloined Penny Black, for instance. If I recall correctly, His Majesty the King was thinking of making you a Knight of the Garter.”

I blushed. I did not much care for such personal talk coming from the mouths of strangers.

“About Oliver Inchbald,” I said.

“Just so,” Finbar said. “I expect you were fattened in the nursery on
Hobbyhorse House.”

It was an insult, and I recognized it as one instantly. I was not going to let this self-important scribbler get away.

“I was, Mr. Joyce,” I said. “And I suspect you were, also.”

“By the river Liffey, I sat down and wept!” Finbar exclaimed. “Touché! Hallelujah! You've smuggled in an unexploded bomb, Miss Bannerman. A veritable UXB in pigtails. More than I had bargained for.”

What
had
he bargained for
?
I wondered. Hadn't Mildred said that the man would sell the souls of everyone in sight for a couple of quid and a pint of Guinness? What had she offered him in exchange for dishing up the lowdown on Oliver Inchbald?

“
Mrs.
Bannerman,” Mildred corrected him.

I beamed at her. We were on the same team.

“You were sent to the scene of his death?” I asked.

“Assigned,” Finbar corrected, “by old Bartleby, my editor. Dispatched, as it were. Thence wafted on the swift wheels of the Great Western Railway to Weston-super-Mare, where I proceeded to—”

“Tell us about the corpse,” I interrupted, at the risk of seeming obnoxious. I was growing tired of listening to this windbag.

“Ah, the corpse,” he said, and his face grew suddenly solemn as he drew in a deep breath.

“Bones, flesh, and feathers—as if an angel had crashed.”

Now, this was reporting! I couldn't recall if angels actually had flesh, but otherwise this was journalism with real juice. I allowed my mouth to fall open in appreciation.

“But you didn't say so in your article,” I said.

“No. One is not allowed a soul when the Proprietor is paying for the ink.”

I felt suddenly sorry for Finbar Joyce.

“The Proprietor?” I asked.

“Lord Ruffley. He who holds all of us in the palm of his hand, there to be fed like feasting flies—or flicked off into oblivion.”

“You are being very honest, Mr. Joyce,” Mildred said quietly.

Finbar's eyes swept slowly round to her, like a lighthouse in the night. “There are occasions, Mrs. Bannerman,” he said, “when honesty is the only option left.”

“Are you telling us that Lord Ruffley intervened in your reporting of Inchbald's death?”

“I am telling you that Fleet Street is a harsh mistress. No more, no less.”

“As I well remember,” Mildred said.

As in a blinding flash I recalled that Mildred had been subjected, as few humans before her, to the full glare of the newspapers' headlights. As a convicted murderess, she had been shot and shamed by a hundred thousand cameras, all of her newspaper photos chosen to make her look cruel, haunted, gaunt, and guilty.

But why was she telling him this? It made no sense. I looked from her face to his, as if to find the answer.

“You know each other!” I exclaimed as the light dawned. “You're old pals!”

That whole business of “
Miss
Bannerman” and “
Mr.
Joyce” had been a sham—a show put on for my benefit.

Why, then, had they suddenly dropped it?

“There was a time,” Mildred said, “when Finbar was…was…”

“A lifeline in a stormy sea,” Finbar said, grinning. “A rock…a rocket in the night…a comforter…a warm blanket…”

“Stow it, Finbar,” Mildred said, and we all laughed.

Now that their secret was out, the room became a warmer place: so much so that I removed my coat and hung it with Finbar's on the nearby stand.

“What was he really like?” I asked. “Oliver Inchbald, I mean.”

“Glossy. Slick. ‘Brittle' is the word that's sometimes used. A walking mirror: a piece of cold glass that reflects all that it sees without ever giving of itself.”

“A bully?” I asked.

“Ah! You've heard that, too.”

“Who loved him?”

Finbar laughed—a short, barking noise like a fox. “What a question! Not the usual ‘Who hated him?' asked by the men in wrinkled suits with a whiff of handcuffs and the river about them. Look after this girl, Mildred. She's a menace to murderers.”

A menace to murderers
? I quite liked that. If I ever have a business card I shall have that motto printed on it with an image of a never-sleeping eye.

“Was Mr. Inchbald murdered?” I asked.

“Who knows?” Finbar said. “The autopsy was inconclusive. The body had been too long on the island before it was discovered.”

“And the seagulls?” I asked.

“There was nothing to contradict such a theory,” Finbar said, “except that it had never happened before, which doesn't make it an impossibility. The idea was actually floated by the Proprietor.”

“Lord Ruffley? Why?”

“It's the way of the world,” Finbar said. “A famous man suffering a heart attack on an island sells thousands of papers, perhaps. The same man pecked to death by maddened seagulls sells millions.”

“That's disgusting,” I said.

“Welcome to our wicked world, Flavia de Luce,” Finbar said. “Enjoy your stay.”

“Who loved him?” I asked, repeating my question.

“Well…nobody,” Finbar said. “Except perhaps that woman at his publishers. What was her name—?”

“Congreve,” I said. “Louisa Congreve.”

“Congreve! Yes, that's the one. She was his amanuensis, his dogsbody, and his whipping boy, all rolled into one. Or so it seemed to me.”

How odd,
I thought. Louisa Congreve hadn't sounded like the type to be anybody's dogsbody. And whipping boys were not noted for teaching the tango—or whatever it was—to Winston Churchill.

Or were they?

Could there be shadier sides of life of which I was not yet aware?

I didn't like to think that there were—but at the same time I didn't like to think that there weren't.

By now I was feeling quite benevolent towards Finbar Joyce. Perhaps I had misjudged him. I found myself on the verge of blurting out that the body he had viewed on Steep Holm was not that of Oliver Inchbald. But I managed somehow to hold my tongue.

Detection is a game of cards, I had already decided. It is not necessary to show your hand to the other players—such as Inspector Hewitt, for instance. Not even to Mildred. For some reason which I could not yet explain, I hadn't confided in her all that I had found out at Thornfield Chase.

I was thinking this when Finbar got up from his desk, looked out the window, then drifted to the door, which he opened and, after a glance outside, quietly closed again.

“Listen,” he told us. “I oughtn't to be doing this, but since we're all hail-fellows-well-met—and as long as you keep quiet about it, at least until the papers are on the street—”

“You have our solemn word,” Mildred promised, without consulting me.

“It's just come through this morning. The body found on Steep Holm was not that of Oliver Inchbald.”

He looked from one of us to the other to judge the impact.

I've learned in my short life that surprise is the most difficult of all the emotions to fake. By contrast, happiness, fear, anger, disgust, and sadness are a piece of cake.

But surprise takes some real acting skill. One must avoid shooting the eyebrows up in inverted
V
s, like a circus clown, or throwing up the hands, palms outward, or widening the eyes until they are, like the dog's in the fairy tale, as big as saucers.

Letting the mouth fall open is the mark of an amateur—even though I've occasionally done it myself for variety.

Instead, one must begin with a barely perceptible blink, followed, after a count of three, by another, this one more noticeable. Each of these must be accompanied by an inhalation of air, the first through the nose and the second through the mouth.

Only then is the hand allowed to make a slight movement towards the throat, but it must be stopped forcefully before it has gone half a foot.

“I beg your pardon?” I said.

Making a person repeat their surprising statement robs it of some of its power; gives you a little more time to go through your rigmarole.

“The body found on Steep Holm was not that of Oliver Inchbald,” Finbar repeated.

“No!” I said.

“It's true.” Finbar nodded, and he seemed gratified by my response. “Someone in the pathologist's office had an early pint with one of our lads and—well, by this evening it will have circled the world.”

I shook my head, as if in disbelief, and stared at him expectantly, like a dog waiting for the third biscuit.

“Turns out to be the remains of a tramp named Walter Glover. Spent his life driving wooden stakes into remote places to mark the spots to which the Holy Ghost and little men from Mars had both descended.

“At any rate, they didn't find his marker on Steep Holm until a couple of days ago, so that there was no reason to connect him with the place. His family didn't really bother keeping track of him, which explains why he was never reported missing.”

“Men from Mars,” Mildred said. “It is very sad, isn't it?”

Finbar nodded. “Mr. Wells has much to answer for,” he said.

As we put on our coats and made ready for the cold outdoors, Finbar stood up behind his desk.

“Farewell, fair Flavia,” he said. “I shall mark this day with the traditional white pebble, so that in my latter years—”

“What about the pipe?” I interrupted.

“Pipe?” Finbar said, surprised.

“Yes,” I said. “The pipe with
O.I.,
or something similar, engraved on the stem.”

Carla and James Marlowe had both mentioned the pipe that had been found beside the ravaged body. I'll admit I was speculating about the monogram, but a man with money who monograms one thing will likely monogram everything in sight.

“How could you possibly know that?” Finbar said, whitening noticeably. “Inspector Cavendish removed it from the scene with his own hands. Its very existence has been a most closely guarded secret. I was in on it myself only because I happened to be there.

“How could you
possibly
know?” he asked again.

“A lucky guess,” I told him.

“You really oughtn't to do it,” Mildred said outside as she hailed a taxicab. “But I suppose you can't help it, can you? I was much the same at your age.”

I bit my lip visibly as a signal of remorse, but said nothing. We drove to the railway station in silence.

As I stepped out of the taxi, Mildred reached across and took my hand.

“Good luck,” she said, and I gave her fingers a squeeze.

This time, there was no Dogger on the train, and I was left to sit alone, staring out at the ever-darkening countryside.