A police cordon surrounded the jazz club. King’s Road neighbours and passers-by were hemming in, trying to see what was going on inside, particularly because a mortuary van had just pulled up. Poppy, Daniel and Rollo tried to slip through, but were prevented by a line of Bobbies. Poppy recognized the one with the handlebar moustache from last night. If she were not mistaken, he actually smirked at her.
She called out to Marjorie who was in animated conversation with DCI Martin. “Mrs Reynolds! Marjorie! What’s going on?”
Marjorie turned away from Martin, her face a combination of worry and fury as the Detective Chief Inspector went back into the club. “Poppy, Rollo, thank heavens you’re here.”
“Do you know what happened?” Rollo asked Marjorie.
“Apparently there was an altercation. Oscar had a row with one of the staff.”
“Oh no, it isn’t –” asked Poppy, thinking of their conversation that morning.
Marjorie looked close to tears. “No, it isn’t. It’s the barman. But – but – they think Oscar did it.”
Poppy gasped. “But why?”
“Because a delivery man heard them arguing and then saw Oscar running out of the cellar with blood all over his shirt and hands. When the delivery man went in he saw Watts – the barman – dead.”
“How?” asked Rollo as he nodded to Daniel to start taking photographs of the scene outside the club.
“Stabbed, I think. But Martin didn’t say what with.” Marjorie bit her lip. “Oscar’s still being questioned.”
“Inside?” asked Rollo.
Marjorie nodded in confirmation. “All rightee,” said Rollo with an exaggerated drawl. “Let’s go and find out what the neighbours saw, Poppy. Danny Boy, you stay here and get a pic of the body when they bring it out. Miz Reynolds, we’ll see you later.” He raised his hat and took hold of Poppy’s arm and led her up the street, away from the club.
“Shouldn’t we be staying to see what happens?” asked Poppy. “The neighbours are all there anyway.”
“Very observant of you, Miz Denby,” said Rollo, under his breath. “But it’s not the neighbours we’re going to see. It’s Oscar.”
“And how do you propose to do that?” whispered Poppy. “The coppers have got the place locked down tighter than the Tower of London.”
Rollo smiled up at her with his best Cheshire Cat grin. “Watch and learn, Miz Denby; watch and learn.”
When they were about a block away from the club, Rollo pulled Poppy into a side street behind a newsagent. A Daily Globe delivery van was just pulling out. Poppy recognized the driver. He smiled and waved to Rollo and Poppy as he drove off. When the van had turned onto King’s Road, Rollo flicked his head left and right to see if the coast was clear, then took Poppy’s hand and pulled her behind a line of dustbins and skips. He squatted over a manhole cover, inserted his stubby fingers into the holes and began to pull.
“What on earth are you doing? You’ll never lift it; you need one of those crowbar thingies,” observed Poppy.
But Rollo just grinned and pulled the cover up with ease. Instead of coming out in its entirety, the metal disc hinged back like a trapdoor. Underneath Poppy could see that it was made of wood with a thin layer of metal on top to make it look like a manhole cover.
“What on earth…”
“I’ll explain on the way,” said Rollo, motioning for her to get in. “Quick, down the ladder. I’ll close the door after us.”
As the afternoon sun was blocked by the closing hatch, Rollo called for Poppy to wait for him at the bottom of the ladder. With no clue as to where she was going, she had no intention of heading off without him anyway. She stood in what she had briefly glimpsed as a tunnel, girded with wooden supports and a compacted earthen floor. Poppy was five feet five inches tall and the ceiling only cleared her head by an inch – if that. She instinctively stooped, and wondered how someone like Daniel would have fared. Rollo, being a good foot shorter than Poppy, had no such problems. He struck a match and squeezed passed the young reporter, gesturing for her to follow him.
The match cast giant shadows on the walls, and the periodic crunch of discarded matches underfoot – no doubt dropped by previous tunnellers – amplified Poppy’s fear. She did not like enclosed spaces. The Tube lines of London’s Underground were already too much to bear – this was nearly intolerable. Add to that the squeak and scuttle of the tunnel’s regular occupants, and it was approaching nightmare proportions.
Rollo, oblivious to Poppy’s phobia, led the way, chattering over his shoulder as he went.
“The Globe owns half a dozen paper shops around London. I started buying them to improve our distribution outlets. I acquired the one up there just over a year ago. When I was given a copy of the blueprints I noticed something strange. There appeared to be a cellar on the prints, but there was no cellar under the actual shop. I thought it was just an error in the plans, but when I queried the previous owner about it he tapped his nose and said I should speak to Oscar Reynolds. So I did.”
The match sputtered out. Poppy squeezed her fingernails into the palms of her hands. Rollo struck another match and they continued.
“Oscar told me that he hadn’t known the shop had been sold and that he hoped it wouldn’t cause any problems. ‘Why would it?’ I asked. We were a block away from the club and as far as I could tell there was no connection between the two. Well that, Miz Denby, is where I was wrong. Oscar swore me to secrecy – promising me tip-offs when leading socialites visited the club – and then took me down to the club cellar. Behind a wine rack there is a door that opens up into this tunnel. It leads, for a quarter of a mile, under King’s Road, and comes out just behind the newsagent.”
“But what’s it for?” asked Poppy, her fear beaten into submission by her curiosity.
Another match expired. Another was lit.
“Prohibition,” said Rollo. “Or at least the fear of it. During the war there was talk of introducing a ban on alcohol on the home front – or if that failed, raising the price of a liquor licence so high no one would be able to afford it. Tommies on leave were drinking themselves motherless and it was considered unpatriotic for civilians to be partying while the boys abroad were dying in droves. Then across the pond, the great U S of A announced plans to start banning the commercial sale of alcohol, and many thought it would come here too. If you recall, Miz Denby, that was one of my concerns at your job interview when I heard you were a Methodist.”
Poppy did indeed recall it. She had wondered at the time why Rollo appeared more concerned by her religious convictions than her journalistic knowledge.
“But why the tunnel, Rollo?” she asked as they rounded a bend and felt the floor cant upwards.
“Insurance,” said Rollo as his match went out. Poppy froze, trying to control her breathing. Rollo lit another. With a rasp and a hiss, the tunnel was illuminated again. Rollo peered up at her. “Are you all right, Poppy?”
“Uh-huh,” said Poppy, not very convincingly.
Rollo smiled sympathetically. “Don’t worry, we’re almost there.”
Something scuttled over Poppy’s foot. She yelped. Rollo took her hand and hurried her along, going into lecture mode to distract her. “So, as I was saying, when Oscar bought the club three years ago, he, like many others in the hospitality trade, feared they would go out of business if prohibition came in. He arranged for this tunnel to be dug to ensure he could still get deliveries. He did a deal with the former owner of the paper shop and has kept the tunnel a secret ever since.”
Just before the next match went out, they rounded another bend and came face to face with a wooden door. Poppy reached out over Rollo’s head and touched it, willing it to open. Rollo squeezed her hand and then felt around for the latch. Seconds later the door edged forward, flooding the tunnel with light. Poppy let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
Rollo raised a finger to his lips. “Quietly. We don’t know who’s on the other side. Let me look first.” He did, easing the door open an inch at a time. “Looks like the coast’s clear. But –” he looked up at Poppy – “don’t get a fright, Miz Denby; they haven’t moved the body yet.”
Poppy nodded. She had seen dead bodies before. She would cope. She followed Rollo through the gap in the door into Oscar’s wine cellar. Rollo pushed the door closed behind them and Poppy noted that it was disguised as a wine-rack. At first glance no one would suspect the rack actually swung open. If someone entered or exited the cellar by the tunnel they would need prior knowledge of the secret doorway; it was not likely to be found by accident.
The door from the club to the cellar was closed and there was no living person in the room. However, on a bed of broken glass and spilled wine was the corpse of the barman illuminated by the paltry glare from the overhead light. His eyes had been closed, posthumously. He lay on his back, his limbs splayed and his white shirt soaked red. It was difficult to tell how much of it was blood and how much wine. But his face had a long slit down the cheek, suggesting a blade had been used.
“Do you think it was the rapier again?” whispered Poppy.
“Possibly,” said Rollo, tiptoeing across the carnage towards another wine rack. He pulled up a whisky barrel and clambered on top of it, then peered through the rack.
“Over here, Miz Denby.”
Poppy followed, careful not to get her shoes wet in the blood and wine.
“Look here,” whispered Rollo. He pulled back his shaggy head to reveal a peephole through the wine rack and into the room beyond. Again, without prior knowledge no one would have known it was there. She peered through into what she assumed was the club manager’s office. Seated at a desk, flanked by two uniformed Bobbies, was Oscar Reynolds. His usually immaculate attire was in disarray, his bow-tie undone and his gold-rimmed monocle, usually perched cockily in his eye socket, hanging limp against his blood-soaked shirt.
Across the desk was DCI Jasper Martin, his hands folded across his rotund belly, with his thumb hooked into his pocket-watch chain.
“How did you know?” asked Poppy.
“Oscar showed me. He had it put in to keep an eye on the cellar.”
“Because of the tunnel?” asked Poppy.
“Because of theft,” said Rollo. “It happens in all pubs and clubs. Oscar wanted to keep an eye on his staff.”
Poppy looked over her shoulder at the body on the floor. What had Marjorie said the man’s name was? Watts? As Poppy had suspected, it was the same barman who had been at the exhibition – a man in his early forties, of medium height and build. Beyond that, Poppy knew nothing about him.
“Do you think Oscar found him stealing alcohol and they had an altercation?” asked Poppy.
“No, I don’t,” said Rollo, close to her ear. “I’ve known Oscar for years. He’s incapable of hurting a fly.”
“But what if the fly was attacking him?” asked Poppy, peering at the defeated-looking man through the peephole. But even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t the case. Oscar did not appear to have any injuries. If he had been attacked, surely there would be some kind of visible wound. There was blood on his shirt, yes, but that was most likely the barman’s. “So what’s the alternative? A third man?”
“That’s what I think, yes. And whoever it was must have known about the tunnel. How else could he have got away without the delivery man seeing him? And another thing: I smelled cordite before I lit my first match back there. Someone had been through the tunnel not too long before us.”
Poppy shuddered, thinking she had been walking in the footsteps of a murderer. “Then why haven’t the police searched the tunnel?” asked Poppy.
Rollo shrugged. “Oscar probably hasn’t told them. He won’t want the police to know about it. I doubt he’d reveal it unless he really had to.”
“Well, I should think clearing your name of murder would qualify as a good ‘had to’,” observed Poppy.
Rollo shrugged again, then his hand gripped Poppy’s shoulder. “Coppers at the door,” he whispered.
Poppy cocked her head to listen. She heard a “Give us a hand with the stretcher, Bill.”
“They’re coming to get the body,” said Poppy.
“We don’t have much time,” agreed Rollo.
Rollo jumped off the barrel, toppling it in the process. His ripe expletive was drowned in the crash. Poppy helped him up and they ran to the secret door. On tiptoes Rollo reached up and released the catch, then pushed Poppy into the tunnel as the door to the club opened, revealing a pair of Bobbies holding a stretcher.
“What the –”
“Run!” hissed Rollo. “I’ll hold them off.”
“But –”
“Run! That’s an order. And tell Ike he’s in charge.”
Rollo pulled the door shut behind them. Poppy heard bottles smashing and the door to the tunnel rattling.
Poppy ran. She didn’t have any matches, so she had to feel her way along the wall. The floor sloped downwards, the tunnel turned. She heard smashing and swearing behind her and someone shouting, “It’s the Yankee dwarf!” And then more shouting, some of it in an American accent. The tunnel angled upwards and turned again. It must be close, it must be – “Ow!” Poppy collided with the metal ladder. Her cheek bone throbbed, but she didn’t stop. Up the ladder she went, then she pushed on the hatch and it swung open. She pulled herself up into the fresh Chelsea air, then slammed the fake manhole cover shut, silencing the commotion in the tunnel. She heaved an overfull bin on top of the cover, realizing as she did it that she would be trapping Rollo inside too. But she knew the dwarf had no chance of outrunning the policemen. He would be arrested. Again.
Poppy caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glass panel of the paper shop back door. She looked a mess. But no time to worry about that now. At full pelt she ran down the alley and into King’s Road, and back towards the front of the jazz club. As she approached, she slowed to a walk, trying to be as nonchalant as possible. She spotted Daniel, corralled with a group of reporters and photographers, Lionel Saunders from The Courier among them.
Daniel’s eyes widened as he saw her. “Poppy! What the –”
“They’re coming out!” shouted Lionel.
“Get the pic,” said Poppy to Daniel. “I’ll explain later.”
Daniel frowned but readied his camera and muscled his way to the front of the pack, using his height to get the best vantage point. Poppy stayed behind, listening to the flash of bulbs and the barrage of questions hurled at the police and their prisoner.
“Where’s the body?”
“Why did you kill your barman, Oscar?”
“Can we have a statement, Inspector?”
Suddenly, a collective gasp went up from the journalists, and Poppy heard an incredulous: “It’s Rollo Rolandson in handcuffs!” And then all hell broke loose.