Authors: Barbara Cleverly
They enjoyed their coffee for a few moments before Lily replied carefully to Lady Dedham’s earlier suggestion. ‘I don’t think you’re mad. In fact I think you’ve come to an accurate conclusion about the shooting. And I’ll tell you something else – the commander is of the same opinion. I’ve seen the notes. He had underlined your account of the third shot and put a question mark in the margin. It would, indeed, seem to have been the work of an organized gang. But no one needs to speculate … The moment Dr Spilsbury has made his report, we’ll know for certain. They can take a bullet to the police laboratory and identify the very gun it came from – should they be lucky enough to get their hands on it – by the pattern of striations along the casing. It’s the equivalent of a fingerprint for guns.’
‘Good Lord! Can they really do that? How clever! And how … reassuring. The police grow in my estimation every day. How wonderful for you to be involved with such a fine body as the Metropolitan Police. And it must be such fun working with Joe …’
She left a space into which Lily was expected to slide an answer. ‘Stimulating is the best I can say, Lady Dedham,’ she murmured with honesty. Sensing that her reply was failing to satisfy the commander’s admirer, she added: ‘He did save me from being stabbed in the bottom by a pimp on Paddington station the other day.’
This was what the lady wanted to hear. Her eyes grew round and a smile lit up her face for a moment as Lily told the story. ‘Oh, that’s the stuff! I draw the line at a punctured bottom but I should have so enjoyed such stimulation myself when I was young. I should have liked to do something truly useful had there been opportunities in that still-Victorian world. As it was, I only took part in two women’s suffrage marches before I became engaged to Oliver. And, of course, pillar of male society that he was hoping to become at that time, he had to call a halt to such activities on the part of his fiancée. Straight from schoolroom to debutante to future admiral’s wife. I had my first child before I was twenty. Not much time for living, you’d say, Lily?’
‘I see consolations all around me.’ Lily waved a hand at the surrounding opulence and dared to add: ‘And you’re still young and – forgive me for saying such a thing at this time – full of energy and hope.’ This was not an acceptable comment from a stranger on the first day of bereavement and Lily tensed as the widow took her up on it at once.
‘Hope? What hope? Oliver and I were looking forward to the next stage in our lives. He was retiring from the Navy, you know. In the autumn. Coming home to us at last, like his hero Ulysses.’ Her smile was forgiving. ‘Like Penelope, I’d served my twenty years of loneliness. But, unlike Ulysses’ deserted spouse, I shall never have my man back from the sea. Hope gone, you see, Lily.’
‘Never!’ Lily said defiantly. ‘This isn’t the time or the place and I’m not the person to sound the trumpet so I’ll let the admiral’s hero do it himself:
How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
Didn’t Ulysses say that?’
‘Lily! My dear! How could you know …?’ Cassandra began to breathe unsteadily, her composure shattered by the words. ‘That was Oliver’s favourite poem! And now I hear you giving his sentiments back to me. I hear him saying it: “Never grow rusty … shine in use …” And I don’t doubt he would have concluded:
Tho’ much is taken, much abides
.’ Cassandra seemed to draw comfort from the memory and the verse. She smiled bravely over the rim of her cup and changed the subject. ‘Does he terrify you?’ she asked.
‘He? Me?’ Lily stammered.
‘Yes. Your commander. You. He can be a bit of a steamroller. He terrifies
me
! So young. So competent. So demanding. One must not be taken in by the handsome exterior, the easy smile, you know. He tried to teach me to shoot. When all this was gathering … Oliver was unconcerned, of course. Thought he was indestructible … Well, the might of the Kaiser’s navy had failed to sink him, after all! Joe offered me a tiny gun – he could see I was worried – to hide in my bag and he showed me how to use it. Ididn’t catch on very fast, I’m afraid. Hopeless, in fact. After an hour’s practice, he shrugged and grumped at me: “Well, the
noise
might scare someone off, I suppose.”’ She rolled her eyes and pulled a rueful face. ‘I felt I’d failed him.’
‘You hadn’t failed him. Didn’t they tell you? Well, I shall. One of your bullets was found lodged in the back of the larger of the two attackers. You got one of the villains, Lady Dedham! A more powerful pistol would have killed him on the spot.’
To Lily’s mortification, Cassandra’s coffee cup began to rattle on its saucer. She placed it back on the table with trembling hand, gasped and choked. Sniffs announced the breaking of a dam of tears and she reached blindly for the handkerchief Lily quickly took from her pocket and held towards her.
‘If only I’d run faster back down the hall … if I’d shot straighter … with a bigger gun … Oliver! Oliver! I’m so sorry!’ The words came, haphazard, filtered through the fabric of the handkerchief, bubbling up with the sobs.
What was a woman policeman to do? Most certainly not adopt the course of action Lily took. With her resignation letter crackling reassurance in her pocket, she gave way to instinct and moved round the table to kneel at Cassandra’s side. She took the shaking shoulders in a hug, murmuring consoling nonsense into a damp right ear. To her surprise, Cassandra didn’t pull away or freeze into immobility or curl her upper lip in disdain. She hugged her back and the volume of hot tears increased. Finally, noting a slight subsiding of the volume and a lengthening interval between gulps of air, Lily drew away and muttered an apology for the contact.
With a final toot into her handkerchief, Cassandra gave a brave smile. ‘Rubbish, Lily, my dear! Any time’s hugging time … And no one else is going to oblige now. My boys are both
useless
huggers! If I try to approach them with a hug in mind they stand like a pair of cold seals with their flippers at their sides and suffer my attentions for two seconds. Is there more coffee left in the pot, do you suppose? Good. Now, I shot one, you say? Well done me! Do you think I may expect to hear Joe’s congratulations? I shan’t count on it. Tell me – how long have you known him?’
Lily decided on a half-truth. ‘The commander? I wouldn’t say I know him. We’re working on a case together,’ she said, holding Cassandra’s sharp gaze.
‘Ah! Then you’ll need no advice from me on handling him. He does have his weaknesses, which can be exploited …’
‘I wouldn’t dream of handling him,’ said Lily, taken by surprise. ‘But you’re right – he does have weaknesses, one of which is, strangely, his sense of honour.’ She pursued the thought, hoping to hear more in return for her offering. ‘It can be a self-destructive quality. He’s resigned his position. Did he tell you that? This morning. Envelope on the Home Secretary’s desk and all that.’
‘No! How simply dreadful! On account of Oliver’s shooting? But why on earth would he consider … Well, of course, as I speak I see why, but …’
‘Completely unjust. It was the Home Secretary himself who insisted on the removal of the protection squads.’
‘You can be quite certain of that?’
Lily nodded. ‘I am. I’ve seen his signed instruction.’
Cassandra’s eyes grew steely. ‘Then he must bear the responsibility.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I’m going to have a nap in a minute because I sense I’m fading fast, but I shall stay conscious long enough to make a phone call or two. I’ll use the telephone in Oliver’s bedroom. I wouldn’t want anyone to overhear what I have to say. Thank goodness you warned me of this nonsense!’ She reached out and patted Lily’s hand. ‘I can see he’s chosen a good girl to watch his back. Promise me that you’ll call on me again – soon – and keep me up to date with this miserable busi-ness. Between us, my dear, I think we ought to be able to direct his course. I appoint us his guardian angels! Yes, that’s how we should think of ourselves. We won’t let our man suffer.’ She waited for Lily’s murmur of agreement. ‘We’ll finish our coffee and when you go back downstairs to sleuth about with Joe have Eva bring me up the admiral’s address book from his study, would you?’
Then Cassandra blurted out words Lily sensed she could never have confided to anyone in her social circle or her family: ‘I don’t want my life to be over before I’ve lived it, Lily. I don’t want to be a widow. I shall never settle to it.’ And added, more calmly: ‘But, for this one moment, I intend to use all the moral advantage it gives me.’ There was satisfaction and purpose in her tone. ‘Heaven knows – it’s an advantage that doesn’t last for long. I shall reckon on a week at the most before I become tedious. Oliver had many favours to call in from the most surprising quarters and who would deny returning them, on her request, to a hero’s grieving widow? I shall make myself an awful nuisance! I might even feel strong enough to resort to blackmail, should it become necessary. I could! But I’ll tell you, Lily – I won’t stand by and see another injustice done. From this moment, I consider myself to be at war!’
‘Two dozen cigarette ends of every kind from Craven “A” to gold-banded special orders. A half-sucked, spat-out, barley sugar sweet. The left leg from a china doll. A stray bullet from Cassandra’s gun. A certain amount of disturbance of the turf.’
Joe read out his list. ‘Just what you’d expect and all meticulously recorded by Superintendent Hopkirk who had the good sense to wait for daylight before he got his fine-tooth comb out.’ He consulted his notes and pointed here and there as they walked the grassed area across the street immediately opposite the admiral’s front door. ‘Something bothering you, Wentworth?’
‘Yes, sir. There is something … We’ve speculated that they must have been waiting here for quite some time … several hours … in a state of considerable tension. I’ve looked and I see no trace of the essential bodily functions one associates with males under pressure in a confined space, sir.’
He gave her an amused look. His men would have reported ‘No sign of anyone pissing under a tree, sir’. If they’d noticed. This girl took the trouble to phrase her suggestions delicately for a male superior. The least he could do was respond in kind. ‘Good Lord! Bladder control! Evidence of lack of it? No sign. You’re right.’
He ran each tree and shrub in review again and grinned. ‘As you say. Nothing of larger capacity than a pug dog has passed this way. No human had a pee in the night. This was their second staging point. They weren’t laid up here for any length of time.’
‘Sir, may I?’ Lily was already running south towards the next clump of shrubs.
Joe had caught up and was peering over her shoulder when she exclaimed and pointed. ‘There – under the large laurel. It didn’t rain in the night so the traces are still evident.’
They scanned the murder scene from this new angle. ‘Timing, Wentworth! It all depends on split-second timing. Let’s test it out, shall we? You’ll have to be the two gunmen and do the running about for me. Most of the curtains on the other side of the road are twitching, d’you see? They’ve probably set their butlers at the windows to watch. If they catch sight of a large man in a black slouch hat racing about in a suspicious manner, they’ll call the police. A woman in uniform won’t raise an eyebrow … You know the script. Ready? Go!’
He watched as his assistant choreographed the incident as she ran, imaginary gun clutched to her side. Bending low, she sought second cover from the trampled patch they had just examined, but only briefly, just allowing time for Lady Dedham to make her way from taxi to front door, then a few more seconds for Lord Dedham to speak to the cabby. Closing in. She counted out a further thirty seconds for distraction time afforded by the appearance of Miss Harriet Hampshire. And how lucky for the assassins that lady’s appearance had been! Under cover of this, Lily ran across the road and sidled down the path to take up position in the forward cover of the bushes near the door.
Joe called her back in his precise soldier’s voice, breaking the spell. ‘That all fits in very well. And I’ll tell you something else. I think that girl – Hampshire – could have been lurking about here as well. You have to look hard to see it but there’s an indentation here in a bit of earth. It’s too narrow to have come from a man’s shoe. It’s quite distinct and very fresh. What do you make of it?’
Lily knelt and peered. ‘The heel of a high-heeled shoe, sir. Evening wear? And why would a girl dressed for a night out be skulking in the shrubbery in this area? Sort of behaviour you expect to come across in Hyde Park after dark but not hereabouts.’ She looked at the faint outline again. ‘There’s a trail.’ Lily squinted and pointed. ‘She arrived from that direction. The house with the closed shutters on the first floor. Someone giving her shelter?’
‘Number thirty-nine.’ Sandilands referred to his notes. ‘Yes. Here we are. Hopkirk took a statement from the butler, a Mr Jonas Warminster. The owner is a gentleman who goes by the even more fanciful name of Ingleby Mountfitchet. Hardly fits the description of a Sinn Fein sympathizer … Mr Mountfitchet, who is a bachelor, ex-army, had retired to bed with his cocoa when he was disturbed by the rumpus that broke out in the street below. The butler assured him that the noise was a car backfiring and his master went back to bed. Where, judging by the tightly closed shutters, he still remains … sleeping something off? Avoiding speaking to us? Yes, Wentworth. I agree. Further and better particulars required, I believe. We should run a check on Mr Mountfitchet. I’ll give instructions to that effect.’ Joe looked up from his notes and said with emphasis: ‘Don’t worry, by the way – basic slog-about police work goes on while we’re here, dancing about in the shrubbery.’