A Bespoke Murder (29 page)

‘Do you have anywhere in mind?’

‘You’re surely not going to encourage her, are you?’ protested Ellen. ‘I love having Alice here. Don’t drive her away, Harvey.’

‘I’m just respecting her right to do as she wishes.’

‘Thank you, Daddy,’ said Alice.

‘So what’s the answer?’

‘I don’t have anywhere particular in mind. Wherever it is, it won’t be far away. It’s not as if I’m emigrating.’

‘This is Vera’s doing, isn’t it?’ said Ellen. ‘Mrs Dowling told me that she keeps going on about sharing accommodation with you.’

‘That would be a big mistake,’ observed Marmion. ‘Not that it’s up to me, of course, but Alice would get none of the space she wants if she moves in with Vera.’

‘You’re quite right, Daddy,’ said Alice. ‘I want to live alone.’

‘Fair enough – I have no objection to that.’

‘How can you say that, Harvey?’ demanded his wife. ‘Alice is our daughter. She belongs here. Well,’ she continued, ‘until she meets Mr Right and gets married, that is.’

Marmion smiled. ‘Has it never occurred to you that she might stand more of a chance of meeting the elusive Mr Right if she didn’t live under her parents’ roof? Think how awful it was when I courted you and had to be grilled by your parents every time I took you out.’ He put an arm around Ellen. ‘Life would have been a lot easier for both of us if you’d been in digs somewhere.’

Ellen was dismissive. ‘That’s water under the bridge.’

‘Your mother was so reluctant to let you go. You hated it at the time, yet you’re behaving just like her now.’

‘That’s not true, Harvey.’

‘We must be more understanding.’

‘All I understand is that I’m losing a daughter.’

‘Alice will probably be within walking distance.’

‘It’s not the same.’

‘I may still be able to look after the garden, Mummy,’ said Alice. ‘Why not think of the benefits? You won’t have to cook for me or do my washing or change my bed. I’m going to lighten your load.’

‘That’s not how I see it. You’re running away from us. First, you defy us over joining the WEC, and now this.’ Ellen was close to tears. ‘Whatever next – that’s what I ask?’

Alice continued to reassure her mother and Marmion added his own emollient comments but Ellen was in no mood to be pacified. For his part, the news had not come as such a shock. If anything, Marmion was surprised that Alice had stayed with them so long. He was glad that she felt ready to strike out on her own and could see the advantages for her. Ellen, however, could only see the disadvantages. Marmion steeled himself for a long discussion once they went to bed. His wife was not going to let the matter rest.

Irene had volunteered to cook the meal and had timed it so that it was ready only minutes after her sister returned home. They ate in the kitchen and compared their respective days. Dorothy said nothing about her encounter with Ernie Gill, though it was very much on her mind. After they’d eaten and done the washing up, they spent an hour or so playing cards. Irene noticed the difference in her sister. There was a muffled excitability about Dorothy that was untypical. When the game reached a natural break, Irene became inquisitive.

‘There’s something you’re not telling me, Dot,’ she said.

‘What a funny thing to say!’

‘Am I right?’

‘No,’ said Dorothy. ‘You know me. I don’t keep secrets from you.’

‘Then why do you keep smiling?’

‘We had a good day at the shop, that’s all. It was the busiest afternoon for weeks.’

‘I’m glad to hear that.’

‘Let’s play another game. It’s your deal.’

‘I thought you’d had enough.’

‘I’m not stopping when I’m on a winning streak,’ said Dorothy.

The cards were dealt and they picked them up. Irene could still see the smile hovering around her sister’s lips but she accepted the explanation given. She was soon absorbed in the game, especially as her luck improved markedly. The odd thing was that Dorothy didn’t seem to mind losing. That was unusual. She invariably bemoaned her fate if she was dealt a poor hand.

While Irene was concentrating hard on the game, her sister was preoccupied. The meeting with Ernie Gill had left her in a state of quiet elation, and not simply because he’d paid her a compliment. He’d interested her. Dorothy felt that she’d been given a wrong impression about him. She surmised that something had happened between him and Irene to make her sister wish to keep him as no more than a friend. Her curiosity finally got the better of her.

‘When did you first meet Ernie Gill?’ she asked.

‘Oh, it was years ago, Dot. We met on deck. And no,’ said Irene, quickly, ‘it wasn’t the start of a shipboard romance. I was pushing a grumpy old lady in her bath chair at the time.’

Dorothy shuffled the cards. ‘When did he propose to you?’

‘I’ve told you before. I try to forget that incident.’

‘But he was paying you a compliment, Irene.’

‘I suppose he was, looking back, and I must admit that I was amused by the coincidence.’

‘What coincidence?’ asked Dorothy starting to deal the cards.

‘Well, it turns out that his mother was called Irene as well.’

Her sister gulped and her hands froze in mid-air. Gill had made a point of telling her that his mother’s name had been Dorothy. Her good opinion of the man began to crumble.

‘
What
did you just say, Irene?’

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Given the problems they’d had with Ruth, her disappearance was bound to cause panic. Herbert Stone joined Miriam in a frantic search of the whole house. They even scoured the garden. Ruth was not there and neither was her handbag. More telling was the fact that the window of her bedroom had been left wide open. It looked as if she’d climbed onto the roof of the shed below and lowered herself to the ground. Miriam was overwhelmed with guilt. In treating her daughter as a prisoner, she feared she’d forced her into a daring escape bid. As ever, Stone was quick to apportion blame.

‘This is your fault, Mimi,’ he said.

‘I can’t watch her all the time, Herman.’

‘You should have been more vigilant.’

‘I thought that’s what I was being.’

‘Why didn’t you pick up the warning signs?’

‘There haven’t been any,’ said Miriam. ‘Ruth has been so dull
and listless. It never crossed my mind that she could do anything as dangerous as climbing out of her room. What if she’d fallen?’

‘That would have served her right,’ he said under his breath.

In the hope that his niece had not long left, he ran out of the house and looked up and down the road. He even went to the road at the back of the property in case she’d left by means of the garden gate. It was all to no avail. By the time he got back to the front of the house, Miriam was standing in the drive. Stone was panting.

‘I can’t see her anywhere,’ he said.

‘Where on earth can she be?’

‘If I had my car, I could go and look for her. But it’s a complete wreck. And Jacob’s car is still in that garage near the shop.’ He scratched his head. ‘Could she be with a friend, perhaps?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Miriam. ‘Since that awful night, she’s been afraid of meeting anybody. It’s suited her to be shut away in the house. At least, it did until today.’

‘When did you last see her?’

‘It was no more than half an hour ago.’

‘Then she can’t have got far,’ he said, looking up and down the road. ‘The trouble is we don’t know in which direction she went.’

Miriam was tense. ‘You don’t think she’s going to … ?’

‘No, I don’t. If she was going to make another attempt, she’d hardly take her handbag with her. By the same token,’ he reasoned, ‘Ruth would take much more than a handbag if she was simply running away.’

‘Why would she do that, Herman?’ asked Miriam in disbelief. ‘We’re her family.’

‘People behave strangely under stress.’

‘Do you think she’s done this deliberately to hurt us?’

‘I don’t believe she knows what she’s doing, Mimi.’

She held back tears. ‘We must tell the police.’

‘I’ve lost all faith in them,’ he said with a sneer.

‘We can’t let her roam about on her own. They need to start a search for her right away.’

He gritted his teeth. ‘Leave it to me. I’ll speak to them.’

They went back into the house. The telephone was in the hall. Stone was about to pick it up when a thought hit him. Miriam was now wringing her hands in anguish.

‘This is dreadful!’ she cried. ‘Haven’t we had enough pain to bear already? Why is Ruth
doing
this to us?’

‘I’m not sure that she is,’ said Stone, pensively.

‘Ring the police and raise the alarm.’

‘Yes, but what am I to tell them, Mimi?’

‘Tell them that Ruth has run away, of course.’

‘But
did
she?’ he asked, worriedly. ‘Did she go or was she taken? On a warm night like this, she’d have left her window ajar. It’s not inconceivable that someone climbed up onto that roof, got into her room and seized her unawares.’

Miriam was distraught. ‘Are you saying she’s been
abducted
?’

‘It’s a consideration. When the synagogue can be attacked and my car can be vandalised on your drive, we have to accept that almost anything can happen.’ His eyes darted and the veins stood out on his temples. ‘Ruth may have gone,’ he said, anxiously, ‘but we mustn’t jump to the conclusion that she did so voluntarily. She may have been kidnapped.’

Neither of them worked office hours. When they were engaged in an investigation, Harvey Marmion and Joe Keedy let it take over what was rightly their leisure time. If Keedy had important information to pass on, he knew that he could call at the inspector’s house at almost any
time without getting a frosty welcome. After making contact with the True British League, he felt that he needed to discuss his findings with the inspector. When he got to the house, the family had just finished their meal and were grateful to see him, if only because he relieved the taut atmosphere around the dinner table. Marmion was glad to talk about something other than his daughter’s decision to move out. Ellen immediately offered to make their visitor a cup of tea and Alice was amused by his appearance.

‘The last time I saw you,’ she recalled, ‘you were wearing some of Daddy’s clothes and now you’re dressed like a workman.’

‘It was a necessary disguise, Alice,’ he said, ‘and at least this old suit fits me. When I put on your father’s shoes, I realised that I could never step into them properly because they were far too big.’

‘You’ll replace me one day, Joe,’ said Marmion. ‘Who knows? You might even be promoted above me.’

‘That will never happen, Harv.’

‘You’re the coming man. I’m one of the resident has-beens.’

He took Keedy into the living room so that they could talk alone.

‘What was going on when I arrived?’ asked Keedy. ‘I thought I detected some tension in the air.’

‘You did, Joe. Alice has decided that it’s time to find a place of her own and Ellen positively hates the idea. I’m caught somewhere in the middle.’ He gave a wry grin. ‘Such are the trials of family life.’

‘I’m on Alice’s side. She’s entitled to spread her wings.’

‘Don’t you dare say that to Ellen. It’s a sensitive topic.’

‘You can rely on me, Harv.’

When they’d settled down, Keedy described his visit to the Lord Nelson and gave his assessment of the organisation. He felt that it had serious intentions and was untroubled by inhibitions of any kind.
Whether or not it had been involved in any of the incidents under scrutiny, he was not sure, but he got the impression that the two men he met were more than capable of violent action. The scruffy pub that was its unofficial headquarters had made him think that the group was short of money and poorly supported. In fact, as he came to realise, the Lord Nelson was at the heart of an area in the East End where it was most likely to find recruits. People like Brad who lived cheek by jowl with Jewish immigrants were seething with resentment at their growing numbers and influence. He wanted his country to be reserved solely for those who were, in his opinion, truly British.

‘Then it’s no coincidence that they chose a pub called the Lord Nelson,’ noted Marmion. ‘Horatio Nelson was a British hero who kept hated foreigners at bay.’

‘I never thought of that,’ admitted Keedy. ‘It wouldn’t be quite the same if they met at the Black Bear or the Railway Inn.’

‘Where does their money come from?’ asked Marmion.

‘They get contributions from bigots who think like them, I daresay. The one chap spoke about an anonymous donation large enough to buy a lorry.’ He showed the leaflet to Marmion. ‘And they print this sort of inflammatory stuff in large quantities. I’m told they have a sizeable fighting fund at their disposal.’

‘Did they give you their names?’

‘One was called Brad and he was clearly just a foot soldier. The other man pulls the strings. Like me, he chose to conceal his name.’

‘And you say that he had an educated voice?’

‘Yes,’ replied Keedy. ‘He spoke well, whereas Brad sounded as if he had a brain the size of a pea. He’s the sort of character who talks best with his fists. His boss was very different. In fact,’ he said, as the idea dawned on him, ‘if you took away his suit and put him in a pair of
dungarees, he’d answer the description of the man seen with the petrol can at the fire in Jermyn Street.’

He broke off as Ellen arrived with the tea. She put the tray down and told her husband to take charge of pouring. Then she gazed at Keedy with a blend of curiosity and wistfulness. After she’d left, he remarked upon it.

‘That was a funny look Ellen just gave me.’

‘It’s much better than the hostile ones I was getting earlier, Joe. Hell hath no fury like a wife who thinks her husband isn’t supporting her in the way she expects.’

‘Thanks for the warning. I’ll stay single.’

‘Oh, don’t misunderstand me,’ said Marmion. ‘I’m all in favour of marriage. I love it. But it does have its moments of turbulence.’ He started to pour the tea. ‘How does this group differ from the others that our lads have been watching?’