Enter Pale Death (24 page)

“Last item, the most expensive thing I own—and the least suitable—a pair of evening trousers. They’re not by Chanel but they are the next best thing. Paul Vercors of Paris. Look—high-waisted, wide cut. If I stand with my legs together it just looks like a skirt. The drama comes when I start walking. Scandalous really. I’ve never dared wear them. Never had occasion to. I just longed to have them.”

Joe had a sudden vision of Adelaide Hartest’s slim hips and long legs stalking through the Trueloves’ elegant rooms and sighed. “I like it but—what would you do about the top half?”

“My thoughts never got that far. White blouse of some sort? No. I agree, it looks like being the boring graduation black. So, that’s the pumpkin and the ball gown settled,” she said, “Anything else my fairy god father can help with? I think you’ve cast yourself in the wrong pantomime, mister. I see you as a beast of uncertain temper, lurking amongst the potted palms.”

“Uncertain temper? Never. Why do you say that?”

She came to settle next to him on the sofa and for a moment he thought she might take his hand to check his pulse. Instead, she stared into his eyes, checking for whatever it was doctors looked for in eyes. Dilated pupils? Grit? He blinked nervously. “Joe, there’s something troubling you, isn’t there? I mean apart from murder, attacks by green shirts and threats from brown shirts. Something more important than that. Why are you really here? You could have sent an inspector from the Met. A man of your rank doesn’t involve himself with country farces like this, all name-calling, tantrums and whackings with a pig’s bladder, unless he has a very strong personal reason for doing so.”

“Don’t dismiss murder so lightly, Adelaide. But you’re right. I do have a personal interest in this … not farce but drama—which could all too easily turn into melodrama. A girl I’m fond of … the girl I love,” he corrected, deciding he could confide, “is tangled up with James Truelove. Hunnyton, bless the man—for
I’d probably not have leapt into action without his encouragement—lured me over here to get to the bottom of it.”

“Tangled with a Truelove? How uncomfortable! Will you tell me how she comes to be in such a spot?”

Adelaide was a receptive listener and the whole story poured from Joe under her gentle questioning. He told how he’d met Dorcas when she was just a young thing, how their strange relationship had developed and how suddenly after a seven years’ absence she’d flown back into his life, a beautiful young woman, a stranger yet not quite a stranger, and claimed the love he had always had for her. “Hunnyton says I ought to treat her as though I’d only just met her and discount the past,” he finished, dragging the superintendent into the conversation once more.

“Sound advice,” she said with an enthusiastic nod. “You could do worse than to listen to Adam Hunnybun. He has a fund of common sense and a good heart. And he likes you.”

Joe was not very certain about any of those assertions and kept silent. He was wondering with suspicion how she had come to develop such a warm opinion of the man on such a short acquaintance and decided that Hunnyton must have doubled back for a further consultation with Dr. Hartest after he’d dropped Joe off into the clutches of the Wild Man of the Woods.

“Can I tell you something? Something of a professional nature?” Adelaide was saying hesitantly. “I studied psychology as an element of my training and found it utterly fascinating.
Mens sana in corpore sano
is something all doctors should have written on their surgery walls. Broken limbs and infections are straightforward stuff but the tricky—and the repeated—illnesses are not so easy to diagnose and cure. I don’t believe one-half of everything Freud has to say, but there is much work being done—and has been done—in laboratories which can enlighten us. Listen, Joe. It may be nonsense or it may be of help … Imprinting. That may be the key. Have you heard of imprinting?”

Joe shook his head.

“Investigation’s been going on for some years. If you take a batch of fledgling birds—geese, or is it storks? seem to give clear results—and deprive them of their parent birds …”

“Here we go again!” Joe objected. “More animal torment. But—birds? This is a new one.”

“Not new, in fact. Douglas Spalding was working on it sixty years ago. Oskar Heinroth took it up. But don’t interrupt. When they’re ready to fly, they have to be shown how to do it or they’d remain forever earth-bound. If an experimenter runs about in front of the baby birds, waving his arms up and down like wings, they catch on straight away and do the same. They follow him about flapping and squawking, copying him with the clear conviction that he is the parent bird. He takes the process further and by even more energetic flapping and leaping into the air, or off a cliff perhaps, convinces them that they can take off. They actually learn to fly by human example. It’s not perfect but it works.”

Joe stayed silent, sensing she was getting to her point.

“The thing is, they grow up believing that the scientist is their parent, totally devoted to him and disregarding any other attentions, even that of their genuine parents. The same results have been recorded from creatures closer to humans—dogs, chimpanzees. It has been suggested, though not yet proven, that a similar process may take place in children. The theory is that at a particular moment in their development, a moment of change and need, they imprint on an adult or older child and follow and copy and revere this chosen one.”

“You’re saying Dorcas may, at a low point in her life, and finding herself without any other adult she could respect, have imprinted on
me
?”

“Think about it. It’s not a very long step from ‘imprinting’ to ‘falling in love,’ which is the label we stick on a badly understood and otherwise unaccountable impulse. That’s something every
fourteen-year-old girl does understand. And if the chap she has in her sights is every girl’s idea of a dashing hero—good-looking, energetic, chest full of medals, romantically scarred—well, poor love, she didn’t stand a chance. If everything else had been normal or supportive in her background, what she felt for you would have been nothing more than a crush, soon outgrown. Poor Dorcas! I wonder if she has any idea?”

Joe longed to point out that he was suffering, too. If this psychological gobbledegook, which in spite of himself he had listened to in fascination, were halfway true, he had a worse situation on his hands than he’d realised.

“That’s a very alarming condition you describe,” he mumbled.

“It gets worse. It would seem that the
imprinter
himself,” she poked Joe playfully in the ribs, “that’s you—is not unaffected. His own behaviour changes, adjusting, through a desire for scientific knowledge (we’ll rule that out) or a sense of duty and a kind nature (more likely), to what he perceives to be the needs of the creatures he is imprinting. He strives to see the world through the eyes of his subjects and modifies his own responses accordingly.”

“Are you saying I’ve been flapping and quacking and leaping off cliffs all these years to chime with Dorcas’s needs?”

“Something like that,” she said, shaking with suppressed laughter.

“Am I destined to go on doing bird imitations for the rest of my life or is there a cure?” was the only thing he could think of to ask.

“No. Shouldn’t think so. But you could change the condition, having recognised it for what it is. Yes. Accept it, understand it and change it for something else. I’ve known old gents swap their gout for arthritis—or the other way around—when it suited them. Listen to Adam. Take her for a new person. Make a fresh beginning. Flirt with her, ask her about her life—her present life—and
don’t rake up the past. None of that ‘Do you remember when you were in pigtails?’ stuff. And, above all, don’t leap in and slap down a proposal of marriage at her feet. You’ve so far avoided this and I’m quite sure your instinct has been guiding you well. In fact, knowingly or unknowingly, I’d say your Dorcas had already started on the road back to normality by distancing herself from you for the past few years. You must hope she can love the man you are now, not the one she imagined you were when she first came running after you.”

“Hmmph. Flirt and hope? You make it sound rather straightforward, Adelaide. It’s not. I had rather thought my flirting days were over. There comes a moment when audacious charm begins to look like geriatric seduction. A boyish smile turns into a suggestive leer overnight.”

She peered at him. “Oh, I think you’re quite safe. Not grey yet and no moustache. You have all your teeth. Very nice teeth. Yes—you could get away with a well-directed leer still, I reckon.”

“But before I can even expose her to that—I first have to keep her safe. Get her out of James Truelove’s clutches.”

Adelaide’s voice had lost its certainty when she replied. “Joe—how would you know that’s not where she wants to be?” She looked at him, her amber eyes suddenly filling with pity and fear, and she took hold of his hand to squeeze it gently in sympathy.

“Will someone tell me what precisely is going on here?” an angry voice demanded from the doorway. “The moment my back’s turned I come home to find my daughter, discarded garments round her ankles, sitting on the sofa, spooning with a complete stranger! A stranger who’s parked his red racer by my front door.”

Veterinary surgeon Hartest, moustache bristling with parental wrath, stomped into the parlour in his socks. “Good afternoon, sir! Do I need to fetch my shotgun?” Large, red-haired, smelling of the countryside and clearly at the end of an exhausting day, he reduced Joe to quaking confusion.

“Father!” Adelaide said crossly. “Joe came seeking medical help for a face wound and psychiatric advice on a personal problem.”

“Looks more like hands-on treatment he’s getting,” Hartest said, unable any longer to contain his mischievous amusement. “Are you billing him or is this one of your charity cases, Adelaide?”

“This is Assistant Commissioner Joseph Sandilands of Scotland Yard and he’s up to his ears in a murder case.
The
murder case. He was disappointed not to see
you
, Pa.”

“He seems quite happy with the substitute. Has the feller been here since eleven this morning?”

Hearing the mantel clock chime six, Joe was taken aback. He hurriedly shook hands with Hartest and made his excuses to father and daughter. “On duty at seven … must bathe and change into evening suit … Must find an opportunity to discuss the case and meantime thank Miss Hartest for filling in so effectively …”

He dashed off on the bicycle, but even the Swine could not go fast enough to leave his confusion behind and he arrived back at the Hall four minutes later, both cheeks aflame.

CHAPTER 15

ST. JAMES’S, LONDON. SATURDAY 23RD JUNE, 6P.M.

“Stop fussing, Ducks! The kids are just fine. I left them bathed and ready to go to bed. They were boring the boots off your long-suffering Emma, reading her a bedtime story.
Swallows and Amazons
isn’t really her cup of tea, I think.” Aunty Phyl settled at the table, twinkled at her escorting waiter and asked him to arrange for the immediate arrival of a bottle of Pol Roger. Phyl couldn’t bear lists and menus and preferred to give her requirements straight out as soon as she arrived. “We’re dining unfashionably early, aren’t we? Six o’clock? That’s more like kiddies’ tea-time. Planning to go on somewhere? The Ambassadors, perhaps? Now—who do you want me to help you watch?”

Lily’s aunt, slim, vibrant and wearing with professional elegance a gown of her own design complemented by a mist of Mitsouko, looked askance at her niece. Lily’s plain maroon crêpe de chine dinner dress was strained a little too tightly around the bust and drooped a couple of inches too long at the hem. The frumpish look was reinforced by an ill-considered pearl necklace and a pair of her father’s reading glasses with tortoiseshell frames.

“Gawd! I hope you’re in disguise, gel! I wouldn’t want to think you were letting yourself go. I took you for your mother until you smiled.” She looked about her at the other diners, noting their correct evening dress and general air of understated affluence with
satisfaction. Phyl fitted in seamlessly. “We’re a bit mismatched, you and I. Not out of the same bandbox tonight.”

“That’s quite all right. If anyone wants to know, I’m taking my rich publisher, that’s you, out to dinner—so kill the Cockney. I’m aiming to persuade you to look favourably on my latest romantic oeuvre. I’ve written up the first two chapters already. No kidding! It’s been pretty boring watching his nibs over there … Yes … the good looking dark bloke, fidgeting with his gardenia, at the far table.”

Phyl unobtrusively located the target. “Oh. You’re supposed to keep an eye on
him
all evening? Not one of your more demanding jobs, then. I see he’s got his champagne chilling and his engine revving. But he’s nervous. Or perhaps just excited.” She flicked another glance sideways as Mr. Fitzwilliam looked at his watch for the third time in thirty seconds. “I see why he’s having an early dinner … not so much going on as going up?” Phyl raised her eyebrows suggestively. “I expect if you checked, Lil, you’d find he has a sumptuous flower-bedecked suite booked upstairs. I’ve seen him somewhere before … Let’s hope she doesn’t keep him waiting long. This is fun! I didn’t know you were doing divorces, Lil! Do we expect fireworks and a floor show? Anyone I’ll recognise?”

They fell into a natural conversation about Phyl’s exploits at Ascot as the maître d’hôtel eased by their table, leading a young girl. She looked ahead eagerly and smiled as Fitzwilliam leapt to his feet in welcome.

“Oh, my! A pair of love birds! Is that what you were expecting, Lil?”

“Well, no. I was prepared for one of Herr Hitler’s generals, the Russian ambassador or Lady Astor. Possibly all three. What do you make of
her
, Phyl?”

Aunt Phyl, Cockney-born and proud of it, was known professionally as
Madame Claude, Couturière, Londres et Paris
, and could sum up a woman’s character and class and tell you to a penny how
much her husband had in the bank from one brief look. She was completely trusted in these matters by Lily. “Early twenties. Very pretty. A bit tricky to read. A lady, definitely, but I’d say not out of the top drawer. More Bloomsbury than Berkeley Square.”