Authors: Barbara Cleverly
She sat for a few moments staring at the telephone and wondering if she dared. With the hurdle of her decision to resign successfully jumped, what had she to lose? She found the courage to lift the earpiece.
The operator at the switchboard answered in her precise but strangulated tone. They were all graduates, these telephonist girls, and renowned for the way they could torture the English language. Lily had applied for such a post with a laundry in Clapham advertised in the newspaper over a year ago but had given up at the first hurdle when she discovered that of the other eight hundred applicants for the position, many had a degree from a university and most had a cultured, upper-class voice.
‘An internal number please, miss,’ Lily said firmly. ‘Could you put me through to extension 371?’
A few mechanical noises were followed by a gruff male voice. ‘Yes?’
‘Hello. This is switchboard again,’ Lily announced in a fair copy of the telephonist’s voice. ‘
Do
tell me I’m through to Catering Supplies?’ She managed to insert a touch of uncertainty.
‘I can’t. You’re not.’ The voice was military. Uncommunicative.
‘Oh, no! I’ve done it again! Most frightfully sorry, sir!’ she gushed. ‘I do hope I’ve not disturbed you. Please forgive me. It’s my first day going solo, you see. I’m on test. I
so
hope you won’t tell? I think I’ve just inserted my toggle into the wrong slot and made a bad connection …’
A guffaw greeted this. ‘We’ve all done that, darlin’,’ said the fruity baritone, unbending suddenly. ‘Think nothing of it. Your secrets are safe with me. Well, they would be, wouldn’t they – this is the War Office here. Ho, ho!’ He seemed to find his remark hilarious but stopped slapping his thigh long enough to add: ‘And when you do finally plug into Supplies, tell them to change the tea. That Darjeeling they’re using this month is as weak as gnat’s pee.’
‘Assam? Shall I suggest Assam, sir?’
‘Yes. That the dark brown stuff? That should do it. Well – good luck with the test, Iris! This
is
Iris, isn’t it?’
‘I didn’t give my name, sir. That would be against the rules.’ Lily summoned up exactly the right touch of scandalized rebuke. ‘Goodbye, sir.’
She replaced the receiver, stunned by what she’d heard.
War Office? What had Sandilands and, it seemed, herself, by association of some not-yet-defined form, to do with the War Office? For what exactly did they need to know that she was ‘ready and able’? Why did they have a presence in the Scotland Yard building? The questions lined up to ambush her. The answers did not immediately present themselves. There were rumours in the force that a shadowy enforcement arm of some sort had a toehold in the Whitehall warren. Everyone had heard of ‘C’ and his department of patriotic scoundrels. MI1b? Or was it MI1c? Had Lily stumbled upon an organization of that nature? Not such a formidably secret department, she concluded, if an interloper like herself could ring them up and discuss tea supplies.
This flippant thought was supplanted by a more chilling one. She had done nothing to bring her own name to their attention. And yet their earlier conversation with Sandilands showed that they knew of her. Indeed, seemed to have plans for her. Plans on which she had not been consulted. What had he said? ‘Not fully briefed yet …’
‘Mata Hari?’ Lily had suggested half-jokingly, taking a stab at a description of the work he had in mind for her. A female spy, Dutch by birth, Miss Hari had used her allure to get information from both sides of the recent conflict. It was rumoured that, at the time of her arrest in a Paris hotel, the exotic dancer turned courtesan counted, amongst her many lovers, the German crown prince and the chief of the French anti-espionage bureau and that crucial information had passed from head to head to head on the pillow. All too unregulated. No one could be quite certain to whom the wretched woman really owed allegiance. As an agent, she had been turned and turned again. Done to a crisp, was the final decision, and she had been removed from the scene. A put-up job by the French it was generally thought, with the compliance of the British. The affair was considered significant enough to have her put on trial and executed by a firing squad in 1917.
If it was a woman with skills of this dubious nature they were seeking, they would have to look elsewhere. Their choice was laughable. Lily’s sense of proportion kicked in. She was confident that she failed to fill the bill on two vital counts. Her most exotic dance was the tango she’d learned at the Stretton Academy of Terpsichore on Saturday mornings and she had never had a lover, civilian or military. Really – she’d had enough of this shambolic crew, playing at war games and juggling with careers.
Lily reached into Sandilands’ paper tray and took out a sheet of writing paper. It was entirely suitable that it should be headed
Scotland Yard, Whitehall
. She wrote down her name, rank and number at the top and followed this with a brief statement of her resignation from the force,
For reasons made clear to you this morning
, she summarized.
With immediate effect
, she added, dating it. Nothing further. He had heard her views. She folded it, wrote his name on the outside flap and put it away in her pocket. It gave her the reassurance of a lifebelt tucked under her shoulders. She owed him nothing. He could ask nothing of her.
And yet she was disconcerted to find her mind returning to the possibilities he had distractingly opened up. No woman would be made such a tantalizing offer, out of the blue, without the most demanding payback being extracted, she reasoned. What had his proposition amounted to? No less than an instant elevation to detective officer working alongside the commander. Could that be right? That was no opening position with a laundry in Clapham.
She tried to remember what Sandilands had said in his doubtless manufactured confession. That he’d been in Military Intelligence during the war years … that much she was prepared to believe. Had he ever given up his role or was his present position a screen for other, murkier activities? Perhaps he was still at war and fighting on fronts other than crime? And why would he suppose that he was automatically entitled to count on her assistance with his schemes?
She was trying to recall all the wars in which England was involved from Afghanistan to Zululand and had got stuck on Ireland when she heard Sandilands stamping back down the corridor.
Sandilands went straight to Miss Jameson’s room across the corridor and stayed there for a few minutes before returning to his own office, where he found Lily closing the file and laying down her pencil.
She looked up and gave him a friendly smile. He swept off his hat, offered a clean-cut profile and asked: ‘Well, what do you think of Raoul’s handiwork?’
‘Raoul is an artist, sir. He could find a position with the finest embalming parlour in the land.’
He grinned. He decided he could get along with her cheerful lack of deference. ‘Well, how’s it going with the Dedham affair? Reached any conclusions?’
‘It’s a bit early for conclusions, sir. There’s a lot of evidence still to come in. But I have one or two thoughts.’
‘Go on.’
‘There’s something not quite right with all this. Someone at the centre of it is telling you naughty lies.’
Joe had decided as much himself in the early hours. ‘You think so? But it’s perfectly straightforward, isn’t it? A shooting occurred and the killers were apprehended, guns still smoking in their hands. And we have a confession from both of them.’
Lily produced Hopkirk’s sketch. ‘Where exactly had these men concealed themselves to lie in ambush? They must have been laid up there for ages. No one could have predicted to the minute – or even the hour – when the Dedhams would fetch up home at the end of their evening. I don’t suppose they knew themselves. And these thugs weren’t just passing by. This was not their territory. They wouldn’t have been comfortable here.’
‘And regular police patrols would have picked up – at the very least recorded – any doubtful strangers,’ Sandilands confirmed.
‘According to Lady Dedham the cab driver checked the shrubs nearest the house before she alighted and gave her the all clear. She had her wits about her but tells us that she too saw nothing of concern near the house. And yet, less than a minute later the gunmen emerged from these very bushes …’ She pointed with the end of her pencil. ‘Did the cabby look properly? Was he mistaken? Or was he lying and leading them into a trap?’
‘What a pity he’s unable to speak for himself.’
‘Is it known, sir, how they engaged his services? How they came to be riding in that particular cab?’
Joe noted her foresight. ‘Yes. I asked Lady Dedham. All above board. The cabs were lined up outside the hall when the meeting turned out and the Dedhams took the next in line. They weren’t the first and they weren’t the last out. Luck of the draw.’
‘Look – what do you think of the possibility of distraction, sir? Deliberate or accidental?’ Her pencil moved south to the opposite side of the road. ‘There’s a sort of little green area over here … it’s hard to envisage what’s on offer from a map …’
‘Shrubs,’ Joe supplied. ‘I skulked around in there myself. You could hide a couple of quiet men in there for hours.’
‘Righto. Let’s picture them hiding here while the cabby does his reconnaissance and safely unloads Lady Dedham. Then we imagine him walking back to the taxi to assist the admiral … it’s at
that
moment that the men run across the road and hide in the bushes near the doorstep. A diversion could well have been staged then, don’t you agree? Though the circumstances are not yet perfectly clear.’
‘Yes. The arrival of the next fare. The young lady who barged in to commandeer the cab.’
Lily read from her notes: ‘Miss Harriet Hampshire, giving an address in Park Lane.’ She paused, her brow furrowed in thought. ‘It rings a bell with me … Is this one of the houses near Pinks Hotel, sir?’
Joe nodded.
‘And Miss Hampshire claims to have been in Melton Square, visiting a friend. At least that’s what she told Superintendent Hopkirk.’
‘I saw her,’ he said. ‘Briefly before they drove her home. Stunner! She’d certainly have diverted the admiral’s and the driver’s attention. Yes, two dark-clad men, profiting from a distraction, could have got across the road to the forward cover position without being spotted. And they were wearing rubber-soled shoes. In any case, any sound would have been masked by the noise of the taxi engine, which had been left running.’ He heaved a sigh. ‘The admiral dismissed the cabby, and strolled down to his front door. The moment he stood on the doorstep, off guard and backlit by the hall lights, they struck.’
‘I’m wondering why the cabby didn’t set off at once, sir?’
‘Waiting – as he’d said he would – to make sure all was well?’ Sandilands suggested. ‘Some sort of argy-bargy with the girl? Checking directions?’
He broke off and then said, with decision: ‘But look here – that’s enough desk work. Before we go to the hospital, or the jail, why don’t I take you out to look at the scene? Cassandra – Lady Dedham – is expecting me to pay another visit. We’ll take a staff car and go and see whether, in the cold light of day, she’s remembered anything more of significance, shall we?’
And time to put the girl at the fourth – and perhaps the hardest – hurdle.
The house which had been the scene of murder and mayhem with officers of the law and ambulances coming and going all night was now presenting a quiet and unruffled front. All signs of a police presence had been removed so that the normal life of the street might be resumed and the only reminders of the tragedy were the drawn curtains at all the windows and a recently sluiced area, still damp and smelling of carbolic, stretching from the doorstep out to the pavement.
The door was opened a careful inch only after Joe’s second knock. He caught sight of a fearful eye under a maid’s bonnet. ‘Police, miss,’ he said hurriedly before his intimidating features could cause further alarm. ‘Commander Sandilands and his assistant.’ He passed his card through the narrow gap. ‘We’re here to see her ladyship.’
Reassured, the girl stuck her head round the door. ‘Sorry, sir. Lady Dedham’s gone up to her room and isn’t seeing anyone.’
‘That’ll be all, Eva, thank you.’ The door was flung open by Cassandra Dedham herself. ‘Always in for you, Joe. I’m sorry about the unfriendly greeting. With the master dead, the butler laid low, and the footman helping the police with their inquiries at Vine Street, we females left behind are feeling a bit under siege. Come in, come in. There are two of you?’ She gave a welcoming nod and looked Lily up and down in surprise.
‘May I present Woman Police Patrol Officer Lilian Wentworth? Lily, this is Lady Dedham.’
He watched keenly as the two women greeted each other. Clearly, Cassandra Dedham was as surprising to the policewoman as the policewoman was to the lady. Wentworth couldn’t fail to be impressed by Lady Dedham, even in her grief-stricken state. Much younger than might have been expected, perhaps in her late thirties, Cassandra had a classical beauty that could not be extinguished by the shock and exhaustion she was suffering. Her oval face was drained of colour, its pallor accentuated by a smear of blood along her left cheekbone. Her earrings were intact, her dark auburn hair was scraped back into a chignon and very nearly immaculate. One strand had escaped to trail unnoticed on to her shoulder. Even as his eye caught it, Cassandra automatically retrieved it and tucked it out of sight under its velvet band.