As Josephine recalled, it was Marta who had asked rather than she who had offered, but there was no point in splitting hairs.
‘Have you heard from Lydia?’ she asked.
‘No. I told you – she’s at the police station. I don’t expect her 242
back for a while yet. Now, I really must go. Perhaps I’ll see you tomorrow.’
There was no further explanation, and Josephine heard the line go dead long before she had a chance to raise the subject of Lydia’s safety. God, Marta was volatile. How could her attitude have changed so much in such a short time? It was like speaking to two different people. She was about to hurry down to the street to stop the girls making themselves scarce unnecessarily, but paused as she passed the ominous flower, incongruously dumped between bottles of Cointreau and crème de menthe. The widow iris. Of course, in her anxiety for Lydia she hadn’t thought to tell Archie that Marta was already a widow. Could that be significant? She tried to remember what Marta had actually told her: there was very little to go on – just that the marriage had been unhappy and that her husband had died; at the time, Josephine had assumed she meant during the war but, looking back, she realised that Marta hadn’t actually said that. When had the relationship turned sour, she wondered? She reflected on the letters she had received from Lydia, hoping that some of them might have contained information about Marta’s background, but the facts were remarkable only in their scarcity. Certainly, though, someone who was unhappily married didn’t bother to write stories for her husband and send them to the front; that was an act of love. So what had gone wrong? Unless, of course, those stories had been sent to her husband’s regiment but not actually to her husband.
Josephine sat down, still looking at the widow iris. She was used to working back from an unlikely starting point to see if she could build a plausible chain of events, but no scenario she had considered in her fiction could compete with the story now playing in her mind. Could it be that Marta’s interest in Elliott Vintner was more personal than that of one writer in another? Surely there were too many objections to the idea that Marta had been Vintner’s wife and Arthur’s lover? For a start, she didn’t seem the type to stand by and do nothing about the crime that had been committed: wouldn’t she have created hell about Arthur’s death – if she suspected it wasn’t an accident, that is? But perhaps that was a little naive: 243
Josephine was well aware that the independence she had always enjoyed was still the exception rather than the norm, and things would have been very different for a young married woman twenty years ago; she shouldn’t underestimate how difficult it would have been for someone shackled to a man like Vintner to stand up for herself, let alone for anyone else. If he showed the sort of violence towards his wife that he was clearly capable of, who could say what abuse she had suffered or what sort of fear she lived in; and because she had been unfaithful, society would have been against her, too. Pregnant with another man’s child, she would have been utterly at his mercy and completely alone in the world.
After he died, though, she would no doubt have moved heaven and earth to find her daughter; was that why she was here? Even for Josephine, it was far too much of a coincidence that Marta should happen to turn up in a circle of people who were so connected to the other part of her life – if that’s what it was. Had she moved in on Lydia merely as a way to get to Aubrey, and so to Elspeth? Was it Lydia who was being used after all? She remembered the look of pain in Marta’s eyes the night before when she had believed herself to be unimportant in her lover’s life; that had been genuine, Josephine was sure, but perhaps Marta was dealing with feelings she had not expected to have, feelings which would have complicated things if she had simply been waiting for the right moment to let Aubrey know who she was and to be reintroduced into her daughter’s life. With a start, Josephine realised that Marta and Elspeth had come within a whisker of meeting at the station: was that why Marta had disappeared to find a taxi? If she had recognised Elspeth, she wouldn’t want to be forced into an introduction on a railway platform.
Josephine was so absorbed by the narrative she was creating that it took her a few moments to spot the obvious flaw. She was being ridiculous, of course; if Marta were Elspeth’s mother, she’d be behaving very differently now. She’d seen enough of Marta since Friday night to know if she were grieving for a lost daughter: that wasn’t the sort of thing that could be kept hidden. No, she could just about believe that Marta was capable of keeping her 244
composure while Lydia discussed Arthur’s murder in front of her, but the tragedy of a daughter’s death was not something that could be borne in private. In any case, with Elspeth gone there would be no more need for secrecy.
Nevertheless, there was still something that bothered Josephine about Marta. She might have woven an intricate fantasy around the woman’s past, but she had not imagined the echoes of Vintner’s first novel in her manuscript, nor her strange behaviour just now on the telephone. Things needed to be clarified and there was only one way to do it. She picked up her gloves from the table in the hall and took her coat from its hook, then – without really knowing why – she went back to fetch the flower. As she walked across the cobbled courtyard and out into St Martin’s Lane, she could not quite rid herself of a niggling suspicion that it wasn’t Lydia who was in danger after all.
The five-minute journey back to Scotland Yard seemed one of the longest Penrose had ever taken and he was relieved to be back in its long corridors, surrounded by the familiar police-station smell of disinfectant and typewriter ribbons. As he walked through the building to find Fallowfield, he tried to plan – as far as he could –
the next few hours of the investigation. Exploring Vintner’s background and tracing his son was now a priority, and he needed to bring his sergeant up to date and then talk to Lydia. After that, it was time to call a conference with the whole team to discuss the murders from every angle, review the work done over the weekend and take advantage of all the information that could be gleaned from the Yard’s various expert departments. It was the first duty of any detective in charge of a case to co-ordinate this complex web of knowledge, ensuring that every detail – no matter how insignificant it seemed – was available to everyone. He enjoyed his role tremendously: it gave him the chance to test his own thoughts on the case and to gain a full understanding of other lines of enquiry which might come unexpectedly into play. In other words, it satisfied him that he was in control.
He found Fallowfield in the long, pillared CID office, studying 245
a wall of maps which showed every street in the London area. The Sergeant was talking to Seddon, who listened intently to every word, and – not for the first time – Penrose blessed the day he had been given such a competent second-in-charge. He had always respected the way Fallowfield handled the team, giving them friendly encouragement and guidance without ever losing his authority, and he looked now with admiration at the scene in front of him – a room full of men engaged in the methodical and frequently tedious aspects of police work, but tackling it willingly and with great determination.
As soon as he saw Penrose, Fallowfield got up and made his way over to him through a sea of desks and green filing cabinets. His excitement was obvious. ‘Good timing, Sir. We’ve just got the breakthrough we needed. Constable Seddon’s got through to the number on Aubrey’s desk – the one down south that no one was answering.’
‘And?’ Penrose asked, glancing approvingly at Seddon.
‘The number belongs to a landlady in Brighton, Sir,’ Seddon explained after a nod from Fallowfield. ‘She runs two boarding houses down there which provide digs for theatre people on tour.
Apparently, Bernard Aubrey had been in touch with her recently, asking her to confirm some bookings she had a couple of years ago for the cast of Hay Fever. He sent her a programme to look at to see if she recognised any of the actors – and she did. She telephoned Aubrey on Saturday night and told him.’
The boy’s excitement was infectious. ‘Who was there?’ Penrose asked urgently.
‘It was someone called Rafe Swinburne, Sir. She recognised his face from Aubrey’s programme, but the name confused her. You see, when he was in Hay Fever he wasn’t listed as Rafe Swinburne.
He was listed as Rafe Vintner.’
‘Rafe Swinburne? You mean we just stood there and watched Vintner’s son walk away?’ Penrose was furious with himself. ‘That wasn’t an overnight bag – he was packing to leave right in front of me.’ He could scarcely countenance the nerve it must have taken for Swinburne to answer his questions with such casual arrogance 246
when he knew how much was at stake, but it fitted the audacity of both murders perfectly. ‘It’s his father’s egotism all over again.
How could I have been so bloody stupid?’
‘To be fair, Sir, you didn’t know what we were looking for then,’
Fallowfield said, but logic only made Penrose’s expression even more thunderous.
‘Put the call out right away,’ he barked at Seddon, whose sense of triumph was fading fast, ‘and get his photograph in the next Gazette along with a description of the bike. It’s an Ariel Square Four – do you know what that looks like?’ Seddon nodded.
‘Christ, he could be anywhere by now on that thing. There’s no point wasting manpower at the stations. He’s not stupid enough to risk public transport, so I want every available car on the main routes out of the city.’ Seddon hurried off but Penrose called him back. ‘It was good work to keep on that number, Constable,’ he said. ‘Well done.’ He turned to Fallowfield. ‘Is Lydia Beaumont still here, Bill?’
‘Yes, Sir. She’s waiting downstairs to see White.’
‘Good.’ Penrose brought him quickly up to date. ‘If Swinburne
– or should I say Vintner – has done a runner, at least she’s safe for now, but I still want to talk to her. Will you tell her I’ll be down in a minute or two and reassure her about Hedley? Then go and see him again – find out what he knows about Swinburne’s background and see if it was Swinburne who put him up to the alibi after all.’ If Vintner did turn out to be their man, he thought, how on earth would Hedley feel when he realised he had shared rooms with Elspeth’s killer? ‘We need to get to the truth about that because at the moment it works for both of them.’
‘Right, Sir. Anything else?’
‘Yes, just a second.’ Penrose picked up the telephone on the nearest desk, but there was no answer from his cousins’ studio. If Marta had arrived and they were deep in conversation, perhaps Josephine would ignore the telephone? ‘I want someone to keep an eye on 66. Get one of the officers at the theatre to pop over the road and make sure everyone’s all right. If Josephine’s there, I want someone on duty outside.’
247
‘What shall I tell him to do if she’s not?’
Penrose thought for a second. If Marta hadn’t turned up, might Josephine have gone to look for her? ‘Get Lydia’s address – it’s somewhere off Drury Lane – and send him there instead. Let me know as soon as you find her.’
248
Fifteen
Even late on a Sunday afternoon, Longacre seemed too narrow to hold all the traffic that wished to pass through it. Pleased to be on foot, Josephine hurried down the busy thoroughfare, and walked on through the heart of Covent Garden. At the end of the street, she turned right into Drury Lane and was relieved to be within a stone’s throw of her destination; what little sun there had been seemed to have given up on the day before its time, but it was more than the gloomy bank of cloud and encroaching cold that made Josephine quicken her pace still further.
Lydia’s lodgings were on the first floor of one of the artisan dwellings which had replaced the slums at the southern end of the street. Her rooms were instantly recognisable, even from a distance, thanks to a pair of typically flamboyant window boxes that underlined each sash with red and yellow wood and spilled their contents down towards the floor below. Lydia always joked that they were a way of keeping her hand in for the big house in the country when it finally arrived but, in truth, she had a gift for making a home anywhere; despite her mutterings about the impossibil-ity of putting down roots, her digs were always welcoming, elegant and utterly her, and Josephine usually looked forward to spending time there. But not today. As she crossed the road, uneasy about the reception she would get from Marta, she noticed an elderly woman coming out of the house and recognised her as the occupant of the top-floor rooms. They had met once or twice at Lydia’s spur-of-the-moment parties, and now she waved a cheerful greeting.
‘I’ll save you the bother of ringing, dear,’ the woman called, 249
holding the front door open. ‘I hope you’ve got your tin hat with you, though. It didn’t sound like a lazy Sunday afternoon when I went past.’
She was gone before Josephine had a chance to ask her what she meant. Perhaps Lydia had come home earlier than expected and they were ‘sorting through things’ as Marta had put it. If that was the case, it would be tactful to beat a hasty retreat but that didn’t solve the problem of Lydia’s safety and it didn’t answer any of the questions she had for Marta. No, she’d have to brave it, if only briefly.
She had barely climbed half a dozen steps when Marta’s voice rang down to meet her. ‘If you’d been where you were supposed to be all weekend, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,’ she shouted. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you since last night –
where the hell were you? You must have known I’d want to speak to you. And what are you doing here now? I told you never to acknowledge me when I was with Lydia.’
‘Make your mind up – either you want to see me or you don’t.’
The exchange certainly sounded like a lovers’ quarrel but it was a man’s voice, unfamiliar to Josephine and with a petulant quality which she instantly found disagreeable. Could Marta be having an affair? That might explain her moods and the mysterious flower, but Josephine found it hard to reconcile with what she had seen of Marta’s feelings for Lydia. ‘Anyway, your sainted Lydia isn’t here, is she?’ the man continued. ‘I watched her leave. She looks a bit peaky, though – it must be the distress of losing a close friend.’
‘Oh shut up and act your age – this isn’t a game.’ Marta’s words were defiant, but she sounded upset rather than angry. ‘I hate it when you behave like a child. We’ve got to stop what we’re doing