Vinnie was as good as his word, though Bud and I had to hurl ourselves into the back seat of the car pretty sharpish, because it was almost impossible for him to stop. As it was, he drew the ire of several motorists and the horns were still blaring as we zipped off toward Piccadilly Circus, avoiding cyclists, and pedestrians more interested in their phones than the traffic.
“Any requests for our route?” Vinnie sounded chipper.
“Parliament Square, then Lambeth Bridge, if that’s okay?” I replied. “Then if we could go through Brixton instead of Clapham this time, I could have a squint at my old stamping ground.”
“No problem,” was Vinnie’s cheery reply. “I bet John’ll be glad when you two turn up. Sounds like he’s at the end of his tether, poor fella. I told him to just keep pouring cups of tea into everyone, but it seems he’s running out of both tea and sympathy. You two will be just what the doctor ordered.”
I still wasn’t sure about Vinnie: if he and John went way back, as Bud had told me they did, then I hoped I’d be able to talk openly in the car. I decided to test the waters, to help form my own opinion.
“Bud tells me you’ve known John for some time,” I opened.
“I have that.”
“And John said you each have the other’s back.”
“We do that.”
“How so?”
Bud’s mouth fell open.
Vinnie replied, “We met under extreme circumstances, Cait. Formed a bond of trust. Never looked back. He’s a grand man, John. Though I must say, Bella’s got him by the heart. They say there’s no cure for love but marriage, so I hope this business with her sister doesn’t delay the nuptials too long. The poor fella will lose it, for sure, if she does.” Vinnie was a patient driver, as he demonstrated while we idled behind several buses, with no room to pass; it seems bus lanes don’t always work out too well for the rest of the traffic on the road.
“Will he move in with her – or she with him?” I asked.
Vinnie sounded a bit grim. “Now that’s what I don’t know. Might be they’ll want a new place, together.”
“Will that mean that you and Vaseem will have to move too?” Bud jumped into the conversation at just the right moment, and with just the right question.
Vinnie sighed. “We haven’t had that talk with John yet. Vaseem thinks we should start looking for somewhere now, but I reckon John’ll give us plenty of time to get ourselves sorted. We might even consider buying the place we’re in now – if John were prepared to sell it.”
I was wondering how Vinnie and Vaseem earned their livings, so it amazed me that Bud asked, “What is it you guys do for jobs? If you don’t mind me asking.”
Vinnie curled a bicep. “Personal trainer, me. Can’t tell you who me clients are, of course, or then I’d have to kill you. But let’s just say they’re prepared to pay for the best. Do the lot, I do, you see; nutrition, exercise, body sculpting, and self-defense. The full package.”
Why am I not surprised, I thought. “Oh, interesting,” I said. “And how do you manage at times like this? Have you no clients today?”
“Ah now, that’s where I rely upon my secret weapon – the surprise long-distance run. All I do is tell them they have to get out and do a five-mile run, and they think I’m a hero for not putting them through their paces indoors.”
I shuddered. “Good grief, what do you make them do when you’re with them, if they’d prefer to be out running on a day like today?” Vinnie chuckled wickedly. “And how do you know they do it anyway?” I immediately thought of several ways to get out of such a challenge.
“Ah, now that’s where modern technology comes into play,” he replied triumphantly. “They all have to wear those watches that let me know exactly what they’ve been up to, all the time. I track them on my laptop, when I need to – or even just using my phone.”
I commended him upon his resourcefulness.
Bud added, “And is Vaseem in the same line?”
Vinnie chuckled. “Nah – too soft for all that sort of stuff, he is. The sight of a barbell makes him go all weak at the knees, so it does. But see this?” He rubbed his head. “He makes wigs. Makes us both laugh, sure it does. Sometimes I model them for him, if my giant noggin won’t stretch them. He says it’s handy having a baldy about the house.”
Bud’s tone was genuine. “That’s a full-time thing? Making wigs?”
Vinnie turned as we sat at a red light on Whitehall. He was smiling. “He doesn’t do many for regular people, though he fits in what he can for the cancer patients, now and again. Does a lot for telly, films, and the stage. Postiche, as well as wigs. That’s all the other stuff they wear – you know, moustaches, sideburns, that type of thing. I model those too, sometimes. He’s mobile – goes to the sets for fittings and so on. Loves it, so he does. I’ve been taken along on occasion – seen some big names up close and personal. It’s amazing what a difference it makes to them. The actors, I mean. When Vaseem’s done with them you’d not recognize half of ’em in the street. Big part of it all, he is. Won awards, too. It’s how he met Sasha – through the Shakespeare for schools scheme her father set up. She gets…sorry, got…all the sponsors, that sort of thing. Vaseem did a load of wigs for them, and they seemed to get on. He was upset when I phoned him last night to tell him what had happened to her. Couldn’t believe it. He’ll be fine with it, eventually, he said. He took it badly, sure enough. But, there…he’s so busy at the moment, he won’t have time to dwell on it.” Vinnie’s pride in his partner’s achievements was obvious, then he returned his attention to the traffic as we approached the Houses of Parliament.
Big Ben struck the half hour just after we’d passed by. “Should be there by about half two,” said Vinnie, “if the traffic’s not too bad up Brixton Hill. Like I said, John will be glad to have you there. I’ll hang about too, see if he needs me. Vaseem’s at a big old house in Sussex, working on some Victorian TV series this week – you won’t be seeing much of him, I’m sorry to say. Me neither. He’s staying locally. Got a lot of upkeep to see to through the shooting, he said. He uses out-workers for some of the jobs he gets – these TV types won’t wait months for him to get everything made, you see, so he had all the fittings to do, then there’s always fix-ups to be seen to when they all take their bits off after a day’s shooting, and he has to make sure they’re right again for the next day.”
I felt I didn’t need to know any more about the wig-making business. “When you spoke to John, did he say anything about Felicity and Julie?” I wanted to know if we’d missed anything, so far.
“Sounds like a right old mess, if you ask me,” he replied. “Though I cannot fathom what Julie was thinking. I mean, she’s a bit of a tartar if you step out of line, but a kind and welcoming soul, under normal circumstances. But this isn’t normal, is it?”
“Have Julie and Glen been working at Beulah House for long?” Bud was being delightfully Bud-like.
“About five years, I believe. I’ve had many a cuppa with them in their own little kitchen over the past several months. John’s been spending more and more time there, so I have been too. They live in a little flat above the meeting room we used last night. All part of the servants’ quarters block built after they put that big glass thing up on the roof. Old servants’ quarters used to be up in the attic, see, then they kicked ’em out and built a new bit for them. Nice place, they’ve got. What is it the estate agents call it, now? ‘Compact, and bijou.’ Kitchen, sitting room, bedroom, and bathroom – all they need, they said. Their own space. Like me and Vaseem, though, in our case, it’s a bit of a different arrangement, because they’re employees, and we’re John’s mates.”
I tried, “Do you know anything about them – as people?”
Vinnie’s tone was thoughtful. “Glen got into a bit of trouble some years back. Big bit, to be fair. Did fourteen years for armed robbery. Since then, straight and narrow is his road. Julie took him under her wing, and there he’s stayed. Julie knew Sasha’s mother. Not sure Julie ever told me how, exactly. In any case, the connection was made, and Sasha has employed the Powells since not long after she and Piers moved into Beulah House.”
“Sasha and Piers had their own place, but chose to move back into Sasha’s old family home, after her mother died, I understand,” said Bud.
“So they did. As Julie tells it, it was one of those fancy houses in a square with its own private garden in the middle, in what people are pleased to call Fitzrovia. Must have been worth a pretty penny, I’d have thought. They sold up, and moved out to Beulah House. Plenty of room for them, because Bella never lived in the main house. Said she preferred the coach house. Though I wonder if she’s ever regretted that decision.”
“How so?” I was interested.
“It’s nothing she says, outright. More a look here, or a gesture there. I think she feels her sister casts a long shadow…though she’s always quick to point out her focus is her art, and the creation of beautiful objects. But, sometimes, when she looks at her sister, she has that air about her that a woman does when she’s at someone else’s wedding – you know?”
“The ‘I wish that were me’ look?” I offered.
“There you go then,” replied Vinnie. “I knew you were the type to understand.”
“Is fourteen years a long time for armed robbery, here?” Bud leaned forward a little.
“Don’t know that it is, don’t know that it isn’t. I know you can get life for it, but I think it all depends upon the nature of the armament, the way used, and if any harm was done, as opposed to being merely threatened. Probably it depends on what was robbed, too. Possibly more than if any harm was done, truth be told. He was in Brixton prison – leastways, he was just before he came out. Met Julie when she was a barmaid at a local pub. The rest, as they say, is history.”
“Which pub?” I asked.
Vinnie chuckled. “The big one at the top of Brixton Hill. Was that your local?”
“You don’t get much more local than living diagonally opposite a place,” I replied. I mused aloud, “I wonder when they met? Julie didn’t look familiar to me, so likely not during my time there.”
“No, you’d have been off in Cambridge by then,” replied Vinnie.
I wanted to ask how on earth he knew when I’d been in Cambridge, but assumed maybe John had told him. I was getting the impression more people knew a great deal about my life than I’d ever imagined. And I didn’t like that feeling.
Vinnie said, “Here we are now, coming into your old neck of the woods. Quite the going concern now it is, Brixton. Not that it was ever a backwater.”
I looked around the world that was no longer mine: the arches beneath the railway line were buzzing with shoppers, the tube station was bustling, and Marks and Spencer’s was still there – and busy. The market stalls on Electric Avenue were rather quiet, I thought, but there were queues at all the bus stops, and two 159 buses were approaching. The Ritzy looked cleaner than I remembered it, but Lambeth Town Hall was still the dominant presence in the area – in its swaggering red Victorian brick, with wedding-cake-style Portland stone corners, and the clock tower looming over the somewhat bleak expanse of concrete that had replaced the old Tate Gardens.
“What’s that?” Bud pointed at the open area.
“Windrush Square,” I replied, “in honor of the Windrush generation, who came to London from the Caribbean Islands after the second world war, answering the call for willing members of the workforce, and the promise of a better life for their children than they could expect on their home islands.”
“Ah,” replied Bud.
Vinnie’s tone was bleak. “Poor beggars didn’t find the warm welcome they’d been led to expect, though, did they? There were infamous notices in boarding house windows: ‘No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish’. See how we managed to even come last in that list? And that right through to the 1960s.”
“Are things better now?” Bud spoke cautiously.
“There’ll always be eejits who think one human life is worth more or less than another, but I’m luckier than many – folks don’t know where I’m from until I open me mouth. Vaseem, now, that’s a different matter. But there, two gay men, one Irish, one brown, have to decide they’re going to be resilient, right? We’re both masters at pretending we’re ducks, letting all those sideways looks and half-whispered comments roll right off us, let alone ignoring the outright slurs we get if we so much as hold hands in some places. Too many people are annoyed by us just being around them for us to have a truly normal life. All we want is to be taken for who we are, not what we represent in someone’s befuddled little brain.”
I commiserated with Vinnie. He shrugged. I decided to change the subject. “John told Bud that Piers had been seen by a doctor this morning; do you know him and Sasha well enough to judge how he’ll be coping with her death?”
Vinnie shook his head. “Not my type, that man. What do they say? Full of sound and fury…”
“…signifying nothing.” I completed the quote. “So, he’s not changed much over the years, then.”
“You and him have crossed paths before, I gather.” Vinnie glanced at me in the rear-view mirror.
“Yes. He joined the Townsend Agency just a little while before I left it. As far as I know that’s where he and Sasha – or Alex, as I knew her – met and began to work together.”
“Though it’s not him who told me,” said Vinnie, “I happen to know they took a slice of business away from that place when they left it. Poached a lot of key clients. The owner sold up, after that. Retired to France, so the story goes.”
“He did, where he tried to teach the French how to farm snails,” I said.
Vinnie threw a curious glance toward me via his reflection. “Is that so? Sounds like he was a special type of person himself, so it does. Maybe he and Piers had more in common than they thought – because I also happen to know that when he and Sasha moved to Beulah House, he tried to tell the local historical society how they should do better research into the area, and ‘his’ house, in particular.”
“How so?” I was all ears.
“Something to do with that ghost Felicity was on about last night. Piers thought they should have done a more thorough job of investigating the claims over the years – but they told him they had nothing on record at all, which got his goat, it seems. Now don’t go getting me wrong, I’m a firm believer in there being things we don’t understand – but I don’t hold with ghosts, so I don’t. If a soul is unquiet, it might hang around for a bit, but to go wailing about the place for hundreds of years? No. All hogwash, that’s what that is. I reckon it was Piers just wanting to make the house more notorious, so it would be worth more. You could ask Julie, she’ll tell you…oh no, of course, you can’t be doing that, can you? Not unless she recovers…and what John told me about what happened didn’t make that sound too likely. Poor woman. And poor Glen, too. I should think he’ll not cope well with losing her. That much I can tell you. Even if I can’t say the same for Piers. Which is not to say he’ll be dancing on his wife’s grave – just that I have no intel about him…other than what John passes on to me.” Vinnie added, “Almost there – your old flat that is, Cait. Want me to pull over so you can take some photos or something?”
We turned off Brixton Hill onto the South Circular Road and I answered, “No thanks, I’m good. Let’s not keep John waiting any longer than we must.” Having seen a figure at the window the last time we’d passed, I was now keenly aware someone else lived in the flat I’d once called my own, which meant I felt less of an attachment to it than I once had. I’m happy to put that part of my life behind me.
“On we go then,” Vinnie replied, and we spent the next couple of miles all sitting in silence.
Eventually I asked, “You’ve got no guesses why Julie might have taken off and attacked Felicity Sampson, have you, Vinnie?”
“I’ve wracked my brain, sure enough, but can’t come up with anything sensible. So unlike Julie. The only time I’ve ever seen her really lose her temper was when a cake she’d ordered for Sasha’s birthday arrived and it wasn’t right. Julie was – is – a good cook, but admitted she wasn’t the best of bakers, so she’d given in to getting a professional to make a cake. When it turned up, they’d spelled the name wrong – they’d piped SACHA on top of it. It stuck in my head, because it seemed a small thing for her to get so upset about. The woman lost it – out of her mind with rage, she was. Ranting and raving about how someone had let her precious Sasha down. Thing is, it was a cake for both Bella and Sasha, of course, them being twins, and they’d got the Bella bit right. Julie went on and on about it, and ended up doing her best to change the C to an S herself. I don’t think Sasha even noticed. I told her to stick a candle in that bit of the cake to cover up the problem, but she said Sasha deserved to have her name done right, because Miss Bella was the one who always got everything she wanted, and Sasha never asked for anything she hadn’t worked for.”
I gave what Vinnie had said some thought. It seemed Julie had quite a different impression of the relationship between Bella and Sasha than I’d had a chance to witness – and absolutely at odds with that which John had described, when quizzed by Worthington in the palace room. “Is that a dynamic you’ve seen for yourself, Vinnie? Bella being the sister who always gets what she wants, rather than Sasha?”
We weren’t far from our destination when Vinnie replied, “To be honest, I thought that strange at the time, because it’s poor Bella who seems to always get the pointy end of the lollipop. John’s often talked about how brave she’s been when she’s been let down by a supplier, or a client – and he does his best to help her out, or at least put her in touch with someone who can, if he’s able. In the end she pushes through it all, so she does.”
“How do you mean?” I pressed.
Vinnie paused for a moment, then said, “Well, it seems like Bella’s had lots of practice at having to face difficult situations. It’s funny how that happens in a family. See my Auntie Brid, she’d be the one in Cardiff. Her poor old husband attracts bad luck like you wouldn’t believe. I swear if he dropped a pound he’d bend down and pick up a bit of old chewing gum instead, so he would. Can’t hold a job for long enough that everyone can learn to like him – nor for them to find out he’s good at anything he turns his hand to, says Auntie Brid. And John says it’s always been a bit like that for poor Bella. Sasha casts a long shadow. But as for Bella always getting what she wants? Well, I dare say she ends up with it, but only when folks have noticed she was suffering for lack of it in the first place.”
“And Sasha?” I wondered what Vinnie would say; if it was as fascinating as his insight into Bella’s personality, it would be worth hearing.
Vinnie gave his reply almost no thought at all. “Ah now, there you have a woman who never left you in any doubt at all about what she expected, and you knew right off she’d do whatever it might take to get it, or make it happen. A force of nature, that woman. Quite different are – were – Bella and Sasha, for twins, like. Maybe as a psychologist you might know why that would be?” His reflection winked at me as we swung into the driveway of Beulah House which – without the benefit of carriage lamps and a smattering of snow glinting in their light – looked smaller, and less impressive by daylight. That said, the palace room looked, if anything, even bigger, possibly because of the way it was reflecting the still-blue sky, and scudding clouds.
“Here we are then. I’ll drop you at the front then take the car around the side,” said Vinnie.
“Where exactly do you take it?” I asked.
“Along the far side of the coach house there’s a track that leads to what were once the stables. Beyond that is the old farriers’ place, though it’s Bella’s workshop now. The stables are a sort of summer house in the garden, but they use the track for cars they don’t want littering up this entry circle. I’ll cut through at the back of the house once I’ve popped it there. Catch up with you inside, so I will.”
Bud and I got out, thanked Vinnie and, once again, stood on the doorstep of Beulah House uncertain of what would greet us. This time, of course, at least I knew it wouldn’t be Julie who would open the door. I wondered if the next twenty-four hours would be as deadly as the last, and grabbed Bud’s hand as I hoped not.