Authors: Sara Sheridan
‘Finishing up? Fancy a drink? The Cricketers isn’t too busy yet.’
Mirabelle smiled gratefully. She liked it when people kept their word. In fact, she was glad to see him. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘A drink it is.’
It was warm inside the bar, which smelled of stale smoke and beer. The Cricketers was always a popular pub, but at the end of the working week the bar was packed to the gunnels with men nipping in for a swift one on their way home. In the snug, three women, probably secretaries, Mirabelle thought, were being fawned over by a succession of men in suits. The drinks were stacked three-deep in front of them. Gins and tonics, by the look of it.
‘Scotch?’ McGregor checked, shouting over the din. Mirabelle nodded and pointed to a tiny table by the fireplace that was free. There were no stools left. Still, she settled to wait, watching the secretaries in the snug bat off the men’s advances with aplomb. McGregor returned with drinks, fighting his way through the crowd at the bar.
‘They think it’s him,’ he said, putting down the glasses.
‘Lindon. They’ve taken him into custody.’
Mirabelle studied McGregor’s face. When he said ‘they think it’s him’, she realised, he meant that he did too. She swirled the whisky around her glass and tried to sound casual.
‘Really? Do you know why? They must have evidence.’
‘Witness statements. More than just one or two from the sound of it. Turns out there was another girl with Miss Bellamy Gore and she’s made a statement. According to her she last saw the girl in Lindon’s company. They left the club together. These upmarket types! Lavinia Blyth! Rose Bellamy Gore! Very la-di-da! Anyway, I’ve met the investigating officer a couple of times – Chief Inspector Green. He’s a good man. I can leave him a message and try to get some more information for you, though of course by now he might not get it till Monday. Looks like your boy wasn’t being completely honest.’ Mirabelle ran through this information before commenting.
‘Lavinia Blyth?’ she said.
McGregor grinned. That was what he liked so much about Mirabelle. She listened to everything – no detail was too small for her attention.
‘Yes. Mayfair girl. Belgrave Terrace or Square or something. What these highly respectable girls were doing in Soho in the middle of the night … Well, at least that type makes a reliable witness.’
‘I think the Blyths live on Belgrave Street,’ said Mirabelle.
‘Not the Pimlico end, of course. They’re up by the square. Unless they’ve moved.’
McGregor nodded. Mirabelle was always surprising. That was one of the other things he liked. ‘I might have known. You’re acquainted with her then?’
‘Oh, I know her father. He worked with … I knew him during the war.’
McGregor hesitated. It was a touchy subject but he wondered about Mirabelle. She gave so little away. ‘So how did you meet him? What did you do, Mirabelle, when the war was on?’
Mirabelle knew her standard response of ‘Land Girl’ would not cut any mustard with McGregor. He knew her too well by now.
‘Nothing much,’ she said, sipping her whisky. It would be easier, she thought, to deflect the attention back onto the superintendent. That generally worked with men. ‘What did you get up to?’
McGregor smiled shyly. Was he blushing?
‘Well, actually, nothing much either. I was stuck in Edinburgh hoping they weren’t going to bomb Leith Docks. That’s where I was working. We didn’t see much of the Blitz. Most of the planes were heading over to Clydeside and passed us by, thank God. But still they dropped a couple. There was one that blew the front off a grocer’s shop one night and brought down a couple of tenements. A few people died. Terrible. I … wasn’t conscripted for military service,’ he stuttered, feeling awkward. ‘I tried a couple of times but they wouldn’t have me.’
McGregor stopped. His gut was churning. It had been a while since he’d felt the need to explain what he’d done in wartime but something about Mirabelle kept making his thoughts return to those six years and how guilty he felt for not actually fighting. Now he’d told her the army hadn’t taken him she would know there was something wrong with him.
‘I’m glad you didn’t do something amazingly heroic,’ McGregor admitted. ‘I always feel like an idiot because I stayed at home. The Guard isn’t the same. You can volunteer all you like but it’s not a patch on what some men went through in action.’
‘Everyone did their bit,’ Mirabelle soothed.
‘It’s probably how I ended up in the police force.’ McGregor finished his whisky, glad to have got what felt like a confession off his chest. ‘At least these days I get to do people some real good now and then … What are you up to this weekend? Fancy going to the Regent? Alastair Sim’s in
Scrooge
.’
Mirabelle breathed in the scent of the last drop of whisky in her glass. If Lindon was in police custody she had other plans. ‘I’m sorry, Detective Superintendent, I can’t. I’m going to London.’
Sometimes I miss the spirit of London but it’s a very grey place.
Trains went up and down to London till late at night but on a Friday most of the traffic came from the capital and consisted of weekenders looking for a break by the seaside. Even in this weather there were plenty of people who wanted to escape the smog and spend a couple of days in the brisk, clean air of the Sussex coast. Mirabelle hovered in the main concourse of the station pulling her coat around her to keep warm. It would do no harm to go up to Victoria and have a look around. She owed that much to Lindon at least. Despite what London’s finest had decided she was convinced that the young saxophonist was not responsible for Rose’s disappearance. She wasn’t even convinced that Lindon had been the last person to speak to the girl. The intriguing thing was that no one appeared to have discovered what had happened to Rose. Mirabelle wondered if McGregor’s friend, Chief Inspector Green, had charged Lindon and, if so, with what crime.
The six o’clock train was almost empty. Mirabelle settled into a seat in a first-class carriage, folded her gloved hands on her lap and stared out of the window. It was difficult to discern anything in the dark as Brighton receded. The glass reflected a mirror-bright image of the empty carriage and a woman who kept checking her slim gold wristwatch. Mirabelle made herself stop looking at the time.
The prospect of London still made her jumpy. It had been a long time since she’d lived there though the place abounded with wartime memories, many of them painful. She hadn’t been back since the previous spring but some of her happiest reminiscences were of this time of year. It had been in the winter that her love affair with Jack had started. With a jolt she realised it was ten years since they first got together. It seemed a very long time. They met when she was taking notes at a War Office meeting. There had been heavy snow that January, and the secretary who usually took the minutes had been stranded somewhere out of town. Jack took Mirabelle for a drink afterwards, and they had both immediately known they’d be together. It was like falling under a spell.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to lie about it,’ he had said. ‘I’m married.’
Mirabelle hadn’t panicked. ‘Oh, I see.’
When he’d kissed her later, he’d tasted of Glenlivet. ‘I don’t want to rush you,’ he whispered.
But Mirabelle hadn’t felt rushed. Being with Jack had been right from the very beginning – the most natural thing in the world. It had surprised her.
‘I hope your place isn’t too far away,’ she had smiled. She cherished the image of Hyde Park covered in white and those first chilly midnight trysts trying to keep warm in Jack’s shabby flat during the blackout. For some reason, one frosty morning walking in to work not long after the affair started had particularly stuck in her memory. Jack’s cheeks were pink and his eyes kept alighting on her face as they made their way up the Strand past the big white building with the clock.
‘They’re calling it Big Benzene,’ Jack quipped.
It was the headquarters of some oil company. The clock face was larger than Big Ben’s. During the war it had seemed ridiculously Sash and almost un-British but the building had gone up well before the breakout of hostilities. The Strand was busy with silent commuters on their way to work. It was ten to eight and not yet properly light. Mirabelle and Jack had been up most of the night.
‘I could do with some breakfast,’ he said.
They were out of coupons. That happened sometimes at the end of a run when they had to rely on the office canteen and stick to non-rationed items. When they got in, Jack fetched scalding chicory coffee with hot milk he’d managed to blag and some bread with margarine. They’d scoffed it secretly – no one could know about their fledgling romance. No one ever knew about it in the end – not one other soul over the whole eight years. It was mundane, but she’d give anything to eat bread and margarine with Jack. Just one more time.
At Victoria Mirabelle disembarked, her poignant daydreams still playing around the fringes of her mind. The smog curled between the streetlamps and the spokes of wrought-iron framework. It seeped through your body and into your bones. Mirabelle’s heels clicked as she made her way onto the chilly concourse. One or two people waiting at the arrivals board were coughing. London was still here, in fact with the smog it looked as if it had hardly changed. Already there was something comforting about it despite the seeping spiteful cold.
Mirabelle decided to walk. It was still early and the jazz clubs wouldn’t be open yet. She cut past Buckingham Palace where three off-duty guardsmen were heading into St James’s Park. The park was a notorious haunt. Churchill, when he was told about what went on among the bushes, said it made him proud to be British that men would go there in the dead of an English winter, no matter what they got up to. Mirabelle smiled. She and Jack had made love al fresco a couple of times. Air raids seemed to fire Jack’s passion. They both hated the smelly overcrowded shelters and the crush to find a place to sleep on the Tube station floor or the basement of the department. Several times they’d opted to be out in the open air. The whole town was pitch in the blackout. Jack said it was the London way. Even now the thought gave Mirabelle a frisson.
She headed towards Piccadilly past Jermyn Street and then doubled back. It was almost like time travelling. It had been ages since she’d been in this part of town. Her pace increased as she sneaked down the alleyway behind St James’s and into the discreet hallway of Duke’s Hotel, which although not decked out in the grand style of the nearby Ritz, was at least warm and comfortable. The Same-haired receptionist looked up and smiled.
‘I’m just in for a drink.’
The bar was situated down a corridor. A smart waiter in a crisp white jacket took Mirabelle’s coat as she entered. There was generally only one kind of woman who frequented a hotel bar alone. Well, two, if you counted Americans. He sized her up and discounted both options. This woman was British through and through, and certainly didn’t look like a prostitute – she possessed a different kind of glamour.
‘Are you waiting for someone, Madam?’ he asked with a soft Italian accent.
Mirabelle shook her head. ‘I’ll have a whisky sour,’ she said.
The waiter disappeared and she took in the surroundings. Effortlessly understated, Duke’s Hotel catered for travellers, not tourists, and only those with money. The claret-coloured walls were dotted with traditional paintings in gilded frames. The lighting was dim. Small electric lamps with yellowing linen shades lit every alcove and table. Jack used to meet Naval Command staff here in one of the back rooms. It was rumoured the barmen at Duke’s mixed the best cocktails in London. The Italian waiter served the whisky sour with a flourish and left a small bowl filled with tiny crackers. Mirabelle lifted the glass to her lips. The rumours were true. It was the best whisky sour she’d ever tasted. She settled into her seat and contemplated smoking a cigarette. There was something about London that brought out the devil in her. In Brighton she would have been sitting at the window of her flat on The Lawns reading the
Argus
with
Friday Night is Music Night
on the wireless in the background and contemplating a fish paste sandwich before bedtime. This was better.
Taking another sip of her drink, Mirabelle turned her mind to Rose. The girl came from this world, and Duke’s or at least its surroundings were no doubt familiar to her. The Bellamy Gores were established – old money. Rose had come out at court last season. The photograph in the paper had clearly been taken at her debutante presentation. This meant a round of parties and a flurry of privilege. Even during wartime debutantes donned white dresses, pearls and diamonds though many of them, not least Princess Elizabeth, took up worthwhile wartime occupations. They became secretaries, nurses or drivers in addition to the role they undertook at court, much of which was centred on bagging a prestigious husband.
One of Jack’s friends had romanced his driver only to discover she was titled and the heir to a huge fortune. Jack said it had entirely put off the poor fellow. Still, it took a certain kind of person to come from such luxury and seek out danger. Unlike the secretaries, nurses and drivers, Rose had not sought danger in a good cause. The girl was self-assured, clearly, and there was no harm in that. However, the way Lindon had described her suggested that she was perhaps over confident – even superior. The girl didn’t seem to have made any attempt to put Lindon at his ease. Perhaps Rose wanted to be the fish out of water. She’d been happy to stand out, dispense her opinion (which she no doubt considered expert) and Sash her gold cigarette case. Why had she given the case to Lindon? There was something indiscreet about that and she’d disappeared immediately afterwards. Had the girl’s brashness simply upset someone, Mirabelle wondered. Perhaps she didn’t realise that if they felt humiliated some men might lash out. Or perhaps the girl wasn’t missing at all. Perhaps she’d taken off voluntarily. It would be unusual for someone in her social position but there was nothing to say Rose didn’t have a lover. After all there was still no news of how she’d actually gone missing, or indeed if she’d come to any harm. Lindon had said ‘they left’. Did he mean Lavinia Blyth and the other, as yet unidentified ‘glossy’ young person? She wished he’d been clearer or that she’d pressed him on the point. In any case, in whatever company Rose had departed, she had left only the mystery of where she had gone. There was the possibility, of course, that Lindon had lied and he had accompanied Rose, but if that was the case why had he come to Brighton? There was no question in Mirabelle’s mind that whatever time Lindon left the club, he’d certainly returned later. His account of getting the news of the police looking for him rang true.