Authors: Roberta Latow
‘Frankly, sir, I thought we might have done better here. We haven’t come up with one substantiated clue. I can’t see that we’ve got anywhere.’
‘Haven’t got anywhere? I think you and Jenny had better study your notes and do some serious detecting. Examine closely what you have learned about the elusive Lady Olivia while you dress for dinner.’
‘What am I supposed to wear, sir? This isn’t my sort of thing. I’ll feel out of place, downright insecure with those upper-class beauties. It’s very out of line for us to accept such an invitation.’
‘Sullivan, go and get dressed! I detest that “poor little me” attitude so get rid of it –
now
!’ said Harry, irritated with his assistant. It never ceased to amaze him that that old chestnut of the class system was still a problem for some people.
As the two detectives were leaving the sitting-room, Harry announced, ‘Marguerite Chen thinks she is giving a dinner and is in control of events this evening but we three know we have only agreed to be there because we’ll be working. I expect to learn what really happened on the night of the murder and to decide where we go from here.’
While his associates were dressing for what now looked as if it would be a fascinating turn of events, Harry made several calls to South Africa, the last of which was to Sir Thomas Redburn. Amazingly Sir Thomas recognised the Graves-Jones name. He had been to university with Harry’s Uncle Raymond.
They talked about Uncle Raymond of whom Sir Thomas had been a lifelong friend, even though they only rarely saw each other. The conversation finally turned to the reason for Harry’s call: Lady Olivia Cinders. Sir Thomas did, of course, know about the fax after Joe’s call but could not shed any light on the matter. It remained yet another mysterious development in the murder investigation.
‘If you don’t mind my asking, Sir Thomas, how did you come
to be in control of the Lalabella Reserve in Lady Olivia’s absence?’ asked Harry.
‘That was what the prince and she wanted. It’s not the sort of place that can be left to drift along without hands-on authority to control it. I arranged security for them, turned it into a private country all of its own. You see, I have always loved Lalabella, and sold it to the prince on condition he would keep it as it is, wild and wonderful. He and Lady Olivia were staying with me and when I took them to see Lalabella, she fell in love with the place, and whatever Olivia wanted the prince gave her. She was one of the most enchanting women I have ever met. Such a pity she didn’t just leave the prince but had to kill him.’
‘Then you believe she’s guilty!’ asked a surprised Harry.
‘Oh, yes. You see, they had a very volatile relationship – love and hate. They lived a depraved sexual life from which she could not escape. A tragedy, the whole sordid affair.’
‘Do you believe she’s hiding out in Lalabella?’
‘Without my knowing it? Well, I doubt that. But if she has found her way there, you’d never find her. She’d be like a queen in her own kingdom, knowing every move you made. It would come down to who was stalking who. No, she’s too clever to chance Lalabella as a hideaway. You have to remember, you’re not the only one on the hunt for her. The prince’s brother has vowed to track her down, put her on trial in his country and publicly hang her. Lalabella is the first place he’d search for her. I told him it was a waste of time, that if I found her there I would turn her over to him. He believed me. I have been a good friend to his family, they trust me and my word.’
‘I wouldn’t like you to do that, Sir Thomas,’ warned Harry.
‘Have no fear, I’ll keep an eye out for her. But, my dear boy, you have my word I will never find her,’ said Sir Thomas. Two Englishmen making a gentleman’s agreement.
‘Thank you for being so candid with me, Sir Thomas.’
‘Come and visit some time, my boy. Big house, eighteen bedrooms, and Cape Town is very beautiful. Your Uncle Raymond enjoyed stopping off here from his travels. That lady he always travelled with – can’t remember her name – she had the same beauty and charm, was enchanting in exactly the same
way as Olivia. I never understood why Raymond let her get away. Oh, well, old memories. They make one feel young again, at least for a few minutes. Goodbye, old boy.’
Harry rang off and sat for several minutes thinking about Raymond. It had never occurred to him that his uncle had travelled with a woman. Harry had always thought him to be a confirmed bachelor, a man who’d had his fair share of women when he’d wanted them, but never had he imagined that there was one special lady whom Raymond took on his travels. Uncle and nephew were far closer than father and son and yet Raymond had never mentioned that he had a female travelling companion. Harry was wondering why his uncle had kept her such a deep, dark secret? Had he finally abandoned her, or had she abandoned him? He was thinking how much he would have liked to have known her when Jenny and Joe arrived in the sitting-room.
Once Miss Plumm had left Harry behind in Miss Marble’s tea room, she gave a sigh of relief, mounted her bicycle and slowly pedalled home. For days she had been prepared for the moment when she would come face to face with him, having recognised the Graves-Jones name. Intuition told her he was Raymond’s much-loved nephew. She could not imagine that he could be anyone else for how many men in England could there be called Harry Graves-Jones?
Her first sight of him through the tea room window had made her heart skip a beat, he looked so much like Raymond. Then, while having tea with him, she’d recognised many of Raymond’s gestures. It seemed to her as if her long-time lover had been reincarnated, certainly in spirit if not in body.
Once home she lay down on her bed to take her usual late-afternoon nap. But sleep would not come. Memories of her life with Raymond Graves-Jones came flooding back to keep her awake. They had been together for fifteen wonderful years. Both keen travellers, that was how they met: at the Winter Palace in Luxor, Upper Egypt.
Miss Plumm had led an exciting life both before and after she’d met and left Harry’s Uncle Raymond, but it was rare for her to look back on it. She was not a woman to dwell on her past and grow old with nothing but memories to keep her young. Nor was she one who lived and dined out on past experiences. She rose from her bed with a smile on her face, laughter on her lips, and went to her dressing-table. She took a long look in the mirror, liked what she saw and began to do up her hair for the evening.
Having finished her hair and make-up, Miss Plumm went to her wardrobe and selected what she would wear. She settled for a long, deep blue silk taffeta skirt, a burnt orange silk top, and a wide turquoise sash. She wore no jewellery: not a ring on her finger, not a bauble on her ear, not a single bracelet, merely a choker of large pearls. She was dressing for what she expected to be a most interesting evening. When Marguerite had invited her she’d said, ‘Anthea, I’m giving a dinner and want you to come. The New Scotland Yard people will be here, as well as September, James and Angelica, and a few others.’
Anthea Plumm almost never went out in the evening. When she did it was to dine with the Buchanans at Sefton Park or to Marguerite’s house. On the rare occasions when she had people in, they were always the same crowd. She checked herself once more in the mirror and was not displeased.
She knew the women would dress for dinner and look sublime, they always did, and that James would have dressed in black tie and dinner jacket. The Buchanans always dressed for dinner. Miss Plumm slipped her feet into black satin slippers and very carefully walked down the stairs, turned on the lights and set out four champagne flutes for Harry, herself, and his colleagues. She opened a decorative tin and from it removed cheese straws she had made the day before and carefully arranged them on a silver salver.
Just then she heard a knock at the front door which she had left ajar and Harry’s voice: ‘Miss Plumm, it’s Harry Graves-Jones and colleagues.’
‘Do come in,’ she said as she walked from the kitchen through to the drawing-room, carrying the silver salver.
Introductions were made and she asked him if he would mind carrying the silver wine cooler in from the kitchen for her. ‘Too heavy for me, I’m afraid.’
Joe wanted to say something but was too much in awe of Miss Plumm and her drawing-room to open his mouth. It was left to Jenny to make conversation. ‘What an interesting room, Miss Plumm, and so many fascinating photographs. Would you mind if I took a tour to look at them?’
Harry heard the tail end of Jenny’s request. He had taken in
the room the moment he entered the house. It had a singular atmosphere that was enchanting but difficult to figure out. It was old-fashioned, the typical English country cottage one might have seen before the Second World War: all faded flowered chintz and handsome stripes on the upholstered pieces. But it wasn’t quite that because it also had marvellous furniture and paintings, and a concert grand piano in a bow window overlooking the garden. The furniture consisted of fine English antiques and amazingly beautiful oriental carpets, Chinese bowls of fresh flowers beautifully arranged on nearly every table and photographs in silver frames everywhere.
Harry placed the silver cooler on the table indicated by Miss Plumm who asked him to open the bottle of vintage Roederer Cristal, the Rolls-Royce of champagnes. Joe Sixsmith found his voice and started talking to Miss Plumm which gave Harry a chance to think about her. He passed the filled glasses and found it odd that every photograph he saw was topographic: wonderful ancient archaeological sites from all round the world with Miss Plumm the only person featured in them.
Small photographs, big, medium-sized, and in not one of them another human being. Harry raised his glass and made a toast. ‘To Miss Plumm and absent friends.’
She smiled and sipped from her glass. Harry sensed that the elderly lady was the most intensely private person he had ever met. She was a world unto herself. He was fascinated by her because she was like a diamond: multi-faceted. Harry thought that she was not just one thing but another and another. For example, he knew her to have been born in Sefton Under Edge and that her father had been Sefton Park’s head gardener during James’s grandfather’s time. How did she go from being a simple country girl to a well-spoken, elegant grande dame who’d travelled the world.
‘You were obviously a keen traveller, Miss Plumm.’
‘I still am,’ she replied.
‘Even now? How courageous of you,’ said an admiring but not very subtle Jenny.
Harry shot her a fierce look and Miss Plumm laughed. ‘You mean, because of my advanced years? You mustn’t feel you have
made a blunder, my dear, I’m not offended. I have always been an adventurer and enjoyed the far-flung places of this world. It just takes me a great deal longer to get around them now.’
‘How often do you travel, Miss Plumm?’ asked Joe.
‘Once or twice a year, depending how I’m feeling. I only travel when I sense that the body and the mind are ready to go.’
‘Are you planning any journeys now, Miss Plumm?’ asked Harry.
‘Yes, I am.’
He was aware that she had no intention of saying where she was going and to ask her seemed like an intrusion, something he was loath to do. He had a strange sensation that he had been in this room before. Of course he hadn’t. But there were so many easily recognisable objects: Greek bronzes, a stone sculpture of an Egyptian god, an ivory reclining Japanese lady, a Russian samovar, a Tibetan prayer wheel. The whole room somehow had a familiar stamp to it that was reminiscent of his own sitting-room in Albany.
Instinct suddenly took him over and the question had to be asked. ‘Miss Plumm, am I not right in guessing you are a very close friend of Lady Olivia Cinders?’
‘You are most certainly correct, I am.’
Miss Plumm rose from her chair and, taking the bottle of champagne from the cooler, went to him to refill his glass. ‘May I call you Harry?’ she asked.
‘Yes, please do,’ was his reply.
‘Harry, will you top up everyone’s glass, please?’
Jenny Sullivan could barely take her eyes off Miss Plumm. They had been here in this room with the elderly lady for no more than twenty minutes and already she had the three of them eating out of her hand. How had she managed to do that? There was no doubt she had a seductive charm. Miss Plumm was beautiful, enchanting. How was it possible for a woman her age to have so much sensual appeal? Jenny could only wonder how many hearts she had broken in her youth, how many men must have loved her. What a life she must have led. There was no doubting that.
Joe was impressed with the way Miss Plumm answered his
superior’s question while at the same time dismissing him, thus making it impossible for him to ask any more about Lady Olivia’s relationship with her and whether she had seen Lady Olivia on the night of the murder.
Miss Plumm most charmingly turned the tables on the detectives when she asked them, ‘How have you found us? Are we a microcosm of the world? I often think we’re just more clever at hiding ourselves than most. And our dear Olivia who has always, since childhood, played a starring role among very nearly every one of the families here … has she crept into your hearts? I’m sure she has, even though you are her enemy, she your quarry.’
Miss Plumm kicked back the hem of her skirt. The swish of the silk taffeta was a charmingly feminine statement that accentuated the regal stance she had taken. She walked away from the bemused detectives.
Standing at the fireplace, she addressed Jenny first. ‘You, Detective Constable Sullivan – I would imagine the more you learn about Olivia, the more uncomfortable you feel? That’s not her fault but yours. You must not be resentful of her. She is for you a murderer, after all, not a woman to envy.
‘Detective Constable Sixsmith, I sense you feel you are being held back, are frustrated because you have not been allowed to use a more direct and adversarial approach in investigating this case. We’ve only just met and so you will wonder how I have deduced that. Quite easily, actually. You are young and ambitious to climb the career ladder and so had been determined to look upon Olivia not as a human being but as a case you have to solve. You hate her for eluding you and are angry with her friends who love her and are unable to give her up to you. But my dear Detective Constable Sixsmith – we can’t give you what we don’t have.
‘Now, on the other side of the coin, so to speak, we have Detective Chief Inspector Graves-Jones who by now knows a great deal about Olivia. He is naturally besotted with her because to know her is to love her, flaws and all. New Scotland Yard has been very clever in choosing him to head the investigation because if anyone can work out the disappearance of Olivia and find her, it will be him.’
Jenny and Joe were lost for words. The three detectives knew that Miss Plumm was spot on in everything she had said. They could not understand why she had set them on edge with her analysis of the situation. Why had she turned the tables on them? Harry was sure she had intended to do that when she’d invited them for a drink. Well, she had succeeded. She had turned from a fascinating little woman of considerable age to a bold and frank one who obviously felt the detectives needed a dressing down.
It was Harry who broke the silence while their hostess drained her glass. ‘Miss Plumm, have you ever been to South Africa?’ he asked, clearly putting an end to what she’d had to say and killing any possibility of further discussion.
Miss Plumm, ignoring Harry’s question, placed her glass on the silver tray and, turning to her guests, suggested, ‘As nice as it is to have you all here, I fear we must leave for Marguerite’s house and dinner.’
It was decided that Joe and Jenny should go in one car and Miss Plumm and the cake box in Harry’s. He moved it from the front to the rear and helped Miss Plumm into the passenger seat. As they drove in convoy up to Marguerite’s house, Harry was aware of the beauty of the night. It was warm and balmy, with a moon that was nearly full and casting a glistening white light on the park. The black sky was studded with a myriad stars. The faint scent of jasmine filled the car. ‘It’s a marvellously romantic night and your scent … it makes me think of Alexandria,’ he told her.
‘Yes, one of my favourite cities,’ she answered.
‘Miss Plumm, you never answered my question. Have you ever been to South Africa?’
‘Yes, I have, many times.’
‘Cape Town?’ he pressed.
‘Yes, Cape Town. Now I think we should leave it at that. I much prefer interesting conversation to questions.’
Miss Plumm was a woman who guarded her privacy, liked to keep her secrets to herself, that was clear. But Harry had never met anyone who knew how to do it with such determination and subtle style. There was something about her that intrigued him:
that split personality, the country villager and the sophisticated, well-bred traveller.
‘One more question?’ he pleaded.
‘If you must,’ she replied, a lovely smile on her lips. She was playing with Harry and thoroughly enjoying herself.
‘In your travels, did you ever come across my Uncle, Raymond Graves-Jones?’ he ventured.
‘One meets so many people while travelling. Ah, and here we are,’ she said, grazing his cheek with the back of her hand. There was unmistakable affection in that gesture and he was surprised to find how much it meant to him.
He helped Miss Plumm from the car and then retrieved the cake box from the rear seat. She watched his every move, actually very charmed by the quality of the man, his handsomeness. She liked the cut and thrust of him, his subtle approach, his intelligence, that he was sensitive enough to appreciate who and what Olivia was. If any man could find her and bring her to justice it would most certainly be Harry Graves-Jones, backed up by the power of New Scotland Yard. But she knew in her heart, as the others gathering in the house knew, that that would never happen. Olivia, if she were still alive, would never allow herself to be captured.
Fate was playing games with Harry and being very good to Anthea Plumm for she had never expected to meet her lover’s nephew. It was, in an odd sort of way, like meeting Raymond again. In the years she had travelled with him she had learned about Harry through his uncle’s love and devotion to his nephew. But Harry had never become a part of her life. Raymond and Anthea had had a very strange relationship. They never once, in all their years of love and friendship, lived together in England. Neither one of them had any interest in that. Raymond liked being a famous and well-respected judge and enjoyed the social set he moved in occasionally … And Anthea? She insisted on no more than their being together when they were travelling. Yet they loved each other, were romantic lovers who could only escape through travel. They were not a couple who could have survived a more mundane life.
Escorting Miss Plumm into the house and balancing the cake at the same time was made no easier by Harry’s being distracted with thoughts of Olivia. There was something so strange about the way this evening was developing. He was working out why and the moment they entered the house, began to laugh. Miss Plumm looked at him and smiled. Jenny looked confused and Joe was busy trying to work out what his superior had to laugh about.