Ten

‘Here they are, Miss,’ said Fox, putting the box of shoes on the red carpet of reception.

Posie squatted down.

Check the pairs .

Twelve pairs, thirteen pairs, fourteen…

No .

Thirteen pairs, and one single shoe; a left shoe, with no matching partner.

A purple shoe, almost worn out, with a fancy sparkly buckle in the shape of a butterfly as its decoration. Posie nodded to herself. She had been right. An anomaly.

She’d checked the pairs .

She stood up, clutching the single shoe.

It felt small, delicate, in her hand. Insubstantial.

Lovelace was looking at her, scowling very slightly. He didn’t speak.

‘And the sink, Sergeant?’

‘Nothing in the sink, Miss. Strange funny noises though; a clanking of pipes and all that.’

Posie nodded. ‘That’s what I expected you to say.’

Evans came off the telephone. He was excited, buzzing. He stabbed at the photograph Posie had left on the counter.

‘A gentleman answering to this description, going by the name of Nicky Carter, has gone missing, Madam. A dashing sort, originally from Tyneside. He left the place I just called last Friday morning, Madam, very early. Hasn’t been back.’

‘Sounds about right. Hmmm, Tyneside, eh? That would account for a ‘foreign accent’ I suppose…’

‘Who is this fella, Posie love?’ cut in Richard Lovelace hurriedly. ‘Is he our man?’

But just at that moment, Inspector Vallance and a young policeman in uniform came rushing in, holding a large brown paper bag, marked ‘EVIDENCE’.

The young man was panting, dusted in snow, but he ripped open the bag and shook the contents onto the floor.

Posie picked over two sad objects, barely recognisable for what they were.

A slimy, mud-encrusted dress umbrella, and a poor, mangy bit of leather, mud-caked, hardly like a shoe at all.

But she picked it up, held it aloft with a kind of pride.

Through the mud sparkled a butterfly-shaped buckle. And the shoe was a right one.

‘No wonder you thought Rosa Rossoli had drowned, Inspector,’ Posie said, turning to Inspector Vallance. She silently reunited the two shoes together, holding one in each hand, as a matching – but not quite matching – pair. She showed them all around, to general consternation and puzzlement.

Posie kept her voice firm, kept it from wavering: ‘But the truth is that Rosa Rossoli didn’t drown here in Rye, and she certainly never wore these shoes to go out walking in. Mainly because she was silly and sentimental and she treasured them. She would have hated to see this shoe in this state.’

She turned to her husband.

‘Let’s go and get Rufus, Richard,’ she said quickly. ‘Do you happen to have a gun?’

‘A gun?’ hissed Lovelace. ‘Well, as a matter of fact…’

‘You’d better bring it along, darling. And get some more men to guard that Priest’s Hole again. Oh, and bring that old map up, will you, Sergeant?’

****

The rooms which comprised apartment ‘32’ upstairs were as cold and uninviting as before.

Lovelace went first, reluctantly wielding a small service pistol, with Fox shouldering along behind him. Posie followed, carrying Patsy, and Inspector Vallance brought up the rear.

She’d hoped never to set foot in this place again, but, as sometimes happened, things had come together and she’d understood everything, at last.

Understood the awful, shallow, silly, pathetic, cheap truth of this case.

They all stood about in the bare electric light, and slowly the men turned to Posie, waiting, the atmosphere tense.

Posie spoke clearly, each word spelled out loudly.

‘This is a strange little case in which things are very much not as they seem. The Chief Commissioner was right earlier when he said that he felt as if the game had changed once we arrived here, and that’s because it had . Because what on the surface looked like one thing, was really quite another. We thought initially that this was a plot to ensnare the Earl of Cardigeon, which, eventually, it did turn into. But really, the Earl was simply the bait. Bait to get me here, and trap me, probably to kill me. And all of this was just the icing on the cake of a full-blown murder which had already occurred. A murder which has gone unnoticed so far, and unavenged…’

‘What ?’ said Richard, gobsmacked.

Posie motioned around herself.

‘This was the apartment in which my own estranged mother lived, for the last twenty-or-so years. With her beloved common-law Italian husband, Benito, and with her very much beloved daughter, Dulcie.’

Richard was still holding the gun, eyes fixed on Posie, biting at his lip, but not interrupting.

She carried on: ‘Rosa Rossoli won several dancing competitions, and while the prizes were not huge, they mounted up. In the last few years she’d managed to save around one hundred pounds for her daughter, Dulcie, who was also a talented dancer.’

Posie tried not to let a tremor enter her voice.

Go on .

‘A daughter who had gone through a bad marriage and might need that money someday, to get back on her feet. But, as it turned out, this bit of money was the absolute undoing of everyone. Especially of Rosa.’

Posie sat down on the shabby sofa. She held a trembling Patsy on her lap and hugged her quiet.

‘Rosa was dying. She’d been told she didn’t have long to live, and she’d started to get her affairs in order. She altered her Will to include a gift for me , as it happens. But there began a stupid misunderstanding.’

Posie explained that things had gone wrong, spiralled hideously out of control.

‘Evans confirmed, just now, that last Wednesday Rosa called the Hotel de Paris, in Cromer, where my half-sister Dulcie worked. I’m guessing this bit, but I think Rosa wanted to tell Dulcie that she was going to change her Will on the Thursday, and that this new Will would include me . I don’t think Rosa meant to taunt Dulcie, but perhaps she conveyed her message to her in a deliberately uncertain way, in order to get Dulcie to come and visit. Maybe she made it sound as if she was leaving me all of the money, or that she was splitting it in half?’

Posie shrugged. ‘Perhaps Rosa was lonely, and wanted a visit from her far-away daughter, ever busy with a career which seemed to include no time for Rosa at all. Particularly as Dulcie now had a new beau who was taking up all of her free time…’

‘What of it, darling?’

Posie could sense Richard’s impatience, his worry seeping into the horrible cold sitting-room.

‘Well, Rosa’s telephone message worked. Dulcie, my sister, promised to meet my mother on Friday last week, in the afternoon. To discuss things. Rosa told Mr Putebank she was meeting someone at Hastings, and I’m pretty sure this was Dulcie. I think they met at an old and favourite spot of theirs, on the cliff-top; Ludlam’s Teas and Ices, even though it was closed. Rosa must have gone there about lunchtime, after church. And I don’t know what happened, but something went very, very wrong.’

Posie took a deep breath.

‘I think there must have been a conversation about the altered Will, perhaps with my share still being left deliberately vague by Rosa, and then there was an argument by the closed-up café. A scuffle? Perhaps it was also about Dulcie’s new fella, who had accompanied her down from the Hotel de Paris in Cromer that day, where they both worked. His name, by the way, is Nicky Carter. And he is a fellow dancer; a ringer for Dulcie’s own deceased father. But I think I am right when I say that he is a wrong’un; and I think that Rosa saw that last week. Maybe she said as much. Anger and resentment flowed over, and I don’t know if it was meant to happen, but somehow Rosa Rossoli – my mother – died that day.’

Inspector Vallance gasped. ‘Madam, are you sure?’

Posie shrugged.

‘I’m not sure, no, Inspector. And I have no evidence for this part of the story. But it seems more than likely. I reckon Dulcie and Nicky buried Rosa where they had been sitting, perhaps at the back of that freezing café? But they didn’t bury her deep enough. You said there were reports of animals, disturbances?’

‘Makes sense.’ Vallance nodded, looking grim. ‘And the woman in purple, that was your sister, Miss Dulcie?’

‘Perhaps.’ Posie hurried on.

‘I think Dulcie returned with all due haste to her place of work, to Cromer, so it looked as if she had had nothing to do with her mother’s death, just in case the body was discovered. But the pair were lucky, the snow which started up a day or two later stopped any discoveries being made.’

Lovelace cut in: ‘And this dancing lad? Carter? He went back to Cromer too?’

Posie could only guess this part in the absence of facts.

She shook her head. ‘I think Dulcie took my mother’s own key to this apartment at the Mermaid before they buried the body, and they hatched a plan. She and Nicky Carter agreed that he would return here. Dulcie had grown up here; I bet she knew every inch of the tunnels the Hawkhurst Gang had ever built. She must have smuggled Nicky in from some out-of-town entrance. He began sleeping here, wearing Dulcie’s father’s old clothes, doing what Dulcie told him to. He needed to be here because they needed to make it look like Rosa had died in a tragic accident nearby, because soon enough she would be missed, and questions would be asked.’

Posie nodded, more certain of her case with each passing second.

‘And so Nicky Carter, on Dulcie’s instructions, probably late at night on the Sunday or Monday this week, threw a couple of Rosa’s things into the quay. He had to place the things in such a way that they would be found, not swept out to sea. And everything went according to plan, which is surprising, as Nicky probably isn’t the brightest of lads, and goodness knows why he thought throwing only one lightweight dancing shoe into the river would be convincing, but again, his luck held, and everyone believed the “truth” of what they were seeing when the items were discovered late on Tuesday.’

Posie cast a look of slight reproachfulness over at Inspector Vallance, who blushed slightly.

‘Rosa Rossoli was declared dead on Wednesday, which is when the solicitor had to telephone to Dulcie in Cromer with the sad news. And, sure enough, Dulcie answered his call up there, at the Hotel de Paris. Conveniently miles from here. Away from any suspicion.’

Posie almost laughed.

‘And all of this dreadful while, Dulcie, and perhaps Nicky, were being eaten up with a simmering jealousy, and rage, and perhaps guilt. I think they were still labouring under some kind of misapprehension that Rosa had changed her Will in favour of me. I’m not sure if it was Nicky, bored here, who discovered the stack of letters my mother had left for me, and who forced the trunk open and read some of them, including one which had details of my friendship with Rufus in it – a newspaper clipping about Dolly’s disappearance. Or if it was Dulcie’s idea? Either way, it must suddenly have seemed like a good opportunity. They changed tack and decided to include Rufus in their mad plots. Get Rufus: get me: make some money . A terrible plan was hatched.’

‘So, Miss,’ said Fox excitedly, ‘you think they only cooked up this plan in the last few days?’

‘I do,’ Posie replied.

‘It was badly handled, although the evil in it was strong enough. I’ve told you, Nicky Carter doesn’t appear to be the smartest fella. Dulcie stayed away and tasked Nicky with sending telegrams to Rufus, in order to get him here, and Nicky did so, but he seems to have lacked any imagination, and sense.’

Posie turned and pointed at the guidebook about Rye on the table.

‘I think Nicky Carter thumbed through that book and came up with one of the first names he came across, and used it as his pseudonym when writing to Rufus. Why else would you call yourself “Thomas Kingsmill”?’

‘But why the two separate telegrams?’ asked Richard Lovelace, askance. ‘One sent to London, and one sent here? And only the second one mentioning you ? Was that deliberate?’

Posie nodded. ‘Dulcie must have specified it should be like that. I think it was vital to the whole plan that Rufus left first, alone; in a frantic hurry, thinking he might be reunited with Dolly. If I had been mentioned in the first telegram, there would always have been the possibility Rufus and I would have spoken together, and I would have involved the police from the start. Or, worse, that we would have travelled down together in Rufus’ car. It was crucial that Rufus went by train, left the car behind.’

Posie explained that the Lagonda was very important.

Because Dulcie had planned to take the car from London and to drive it quite deliberately right off the cliffs. This would add authenticity and a level of confusion when it was revealed that Rufus, Earl of Cardigeon, had gone missing.

It would buy the couple a few days’ grace.

‘Dulcie needed the car for something else, too,’ said Posie, grimly. ‘I think Dulcie drove to the cliff at Hastings yesterday, somehow retrieved my mother’s body from wherever it was she had been buried or hidden six days before, and put it into the Lagonda’s back seat. Dulcie scattered luggage – whatever Rufus had had in the car – all about the place, and then she reversed to the highest point of the steep grass cliff, above Ludlam’s, and jumped out, and let the car zoom away with its dreadful cargo inside.’

‘This is a grisly tale, my love,’ said Richard, askance, and she saw that he hadn’t even opened his cigarette tin, nor clicked his knuckles, not once.

Perhaps because of the gun in his hands, too, which he held firm and steadfastly.

Posie held her head up high.

‘It is awful, but Dulcie is clever, I’ll give her that. I think she came here to the Mermaid last night, after she’d crashed the car, and joined Nicky in this flat. Today I noticed there were two teacups in the sink, and the hot-water pipes and the metal of the sink were warm with use. But the cups had disappeared again when Fox went to double-check. It was all evidence of someone, or some people, being in here, despite the fact the place was supposed to be locked up. And using the Mermaid as a rendezvous for Rufus to come to was a stroke of inspired genius: a creepy, old, supposedly-haunted place is an easy location to creep around in through a warren of hidden corridors and passageways, and any footsteps and creaking floorboards are automatically ignored.’

She laughed, but it sounded hollow even to her own ears, and there was certainly no joy in it.

‘I think Dulcie has been spying on Rufus, and on me, too. Today. Watching from secret passages. I’m pretty certain Dulcie was hidden behind the panelling in the small lounge when I first arrived today, that she even darted out in the open to look at me for a second, and then she was lurking behind the panelling again when I lay down on my bed in the ‘Thomas Kingsmill’ room. She even had the cheek to blow my scented candle out! But she couldn’t trick Patsy, who knew she was there all along.’

Posie pointed at the map in Fox’s hands, the only one which Evans had been able to locate today.

‘Dulcie planned this all quite well, considering it was thrown together just these last few days. This map was hers . I recognised the writing on it earlier as being Dulcie’s. She probably made it when she was growing up here, copied it, learnt from it. But last night she doctored the map. I think Dulcie snuck to reception in the night, along a hidden passageway, and took all the other maps in the desk there and destroyed them. She left only this one; from which she had carefully erased most of the tunnels. Especially the tunnel which leads right from the Priest’s Hole, up to this very room. So we would never have been able to locate it. And for the exact same reason Dulcie effectively ‘kidnapped’ Mrs Joab, the Proprietress, after lunch, so Mrs Joab could never be quizzed about the layout of the tunnels; so that Dulcie could spirit Rufus away easily…’

Lovelace’s green eyes opened wide. ‘Where is this tunnel?’ he whispered.

Posie nodded towards the cold, boarded-up fireplace.

‘There .’

Then she added loudly, clearly: ‘Darling, have you got your gun? Fire it straight through the fireplace, won’t you? I bet its only thin plaster board covering the mouth of the tunnel. And your men are at the other end, aren’t they? Lots of them? Also with guns?’

At Lovelace’s inaction and open-mouthed horror, Fox leant across and took the pistol from his boss and fired it once into the ceiling.

Everyone ducked, and Patsy started barking.

‘Hey, Fox!’

But Richard’s protests were drowned out by Fox letting off another volley of gunshots into the cheap wood, and then suddenly, weirdly, the white, stuccoed fireplace in front of them seemed to concertina back on itself, to reveal itself as a wide, gaping hole in the wall.

And out of it came Rufus, gagged and sweaty and bound, and then the Proprietress, Mrs Joab, also gagged and bound, both of them dusty but otherwise unharmed.

They collapsed onto the floor, terrified but silent.

And then out stepped Posie’s sister, clutching at something silver, and last of all her murderous, glamorous wrong’un of a partner.

****

The man looked to be unarmed, and Vallance stepped forward and handcuffed Nicky Carter, who fitted almost exactly his description given by the lady at the Post Office. Except today he was wearing no moustache or sideburns, and his hair was thin, nearly gone, just with a few strands scraped over. So, he’d been helping himself to Benito’s props box, too. And today he looked scared. He didn’t utter a word, but his hands and arms were shaking uncontrollably.

Fox moved over warily to Dulcie, a set of handcuffs at the ready.

But the girl, gorgeous beneath her fear and frenzy, rammed herself up against the wall, a very sharp silver knife extended in her shaking hands, and Fox backed off.

Richard Lovelace was calm, shaking his head incredulously.

‘Where on earth were you going to take the Earl, Miss Rossoli? What were your plans? Wait up here until the fuss had died down, then sell him to the highest bidder?’

Dulcie’s small dark eyes were blazing angrily, and she flicked her hair, longer than Posie remembered it, haughtily over her shoulder.

She wore a long-sleeved black woollen dress, plain, without ornament or detail.

‘We were going to France, actually,’ Dulcie snapped back, sounding brittle.

‘We’d arranged a passage out from here on Monday, on a fishing-boat across the marshes. I’d been trying to reach that gang in Paris, the ones who have taken the Earl’s drippy little wife. It’s been in the newspapers often enough, hasn’t it? It wasn’t hard to reach them. I placed adverts in the main Paris newspaper, paid a translator to help, asking the gang to contact me here.’

Lovelace laughed easily, and there was real humour in it now. ‘Most of Scotland Yard and the best teams of police in France haven’t managed to get hold of that gang, Miss Rossoli, and you thought you would succeed?’

‘I did succeed!’ shouted Dulcie, as Fox tried to edge nearer again.

‘I spoke to a jolly nice chap called Caspian, as it happens. He called me here, today, at reception, at three o’clock. It was Mrs Joab’s shift anyhow but I’d already taken care of her so the place was empty. You, Chief Commissioner, were busy interviewing that poor wine merchant, and Posie had gone off somewhere, shopping. We had a nice chat. This Caspian fella was interested to hear Posie was here, and well. Very interested. He’d heard she’d been sick. I told him I planned to kill her, was going to kill her as soon as ever I could, but he convinced me not to. Very sweet of him. He said he wouldn’t take the Earl here, unless Posie remained alive. Promised me a big fat wodge of cash, too…’

Richard had gone very white under his freckles, and Posie rose from the sofa to grab him, thinking he looked as if he might faint.

‘She’s lying, sir!’ said Inspector Vallance in a flat manner. ‘Just goading you, Chief Commissioner. What a piece of work this woman is! And a murderess too! How could she be here today taking a call on the telephone if she was larking about in a purple dress on the cliffs at Hastings! Loitering …’

‘I’m not lying,’ snapped Dulcie in a hissing sort of manner, an angry cat, the silver knife flashing.

‘I wasn’t at Hastings cliffs today. Yesterday, maybe, for a couple of minutes. But what would I be doing there today, in all the snow? Purple? I never wear purple! You must be mad. You can check on the call anyhow, with the Operator, can’t you? It came in from Dieppe; a hotel called the Lion D’or. This Caspian fella said they were all there, the Countess of Cardigeon included. But they’d shortly be leaving; returning to Paris.’

Richard nodded at Fox. His mouth was grim.

Suddenly and without another warning, Fox fired several shots in quick succession through to the open door of the bedroom.

PAH, PAH, PAH, PAH .

In all the confusion everyone ducked, and Richard threw himself at Dulcie Rossoli, who had crouched down automatically, and the sudden dead weight of Richard’s body falling on top of her caused her to release the knife she had been wielding, just for a second.

But it was enough.

The knife skittered over the floor and Richard grabbed it, passing it to Vallance. He then looped Dulcie’s arms behind her back and pulled out his own handcuffs, none too gently, to snap about the girls’ slender wrists.

‘There! That’s better.’

Posie blew out her breath in slow relief. She watched as Richard took out his cigarette tin, all the while supporting Dulcie’s flailing, angry dancer’s body. He lit a cigarette slowly, taking his time, took a deep drag.

Then he spoke over the top of Dulcie’s head, addressing Nicky Carter, too, who was still trembling and couldn’t take his eyes off the floor.

‘You’ll both be taken to Rye Police Station and charged with breach of the peace and attempted kidnapping of both the Earl and Mrs Joab. Until we have Rosa Rossoli’s body, and rest assured, we will look and look for it, I cannot charge you with her murder, but it’s only a matter of time. I promise you that.’

‘I would have let Mrs Joab go,’ said Dulcie, huffily. ‘After we had got away.’

Posie came closer and stared at Dulcie, meeting her gaze.

‘You were moving about in corridors, spying on me, today, weren’t you, Dulcie? Hoping I’d get scared. Once or twice I’m certain I saw a glimmer of that knife. You must have been holding it right up to the cracks of wood.’

The girl grinned maliciously but stayed quiet.

Posie had to know. ‘Would you really have killed me, Dulcie? With that wretched knife? But what for ?’

Dulcie’s dark eyes flashed with a crazy, mournful sort of fire.

‘Of course I would have killed you! It would have given me pleasure! I was biding my time, looking for the right moment. Until that foreign fella told me to leave you be. And what for? Because I tried and tried with you, and you never cared. Never bothered! I sent postcards which you hardly answered, and eventually I gave up! Focused instead on finding another husband for myself. And so far, we’ve been happy, Nicky and me. Until I heard on Wednesday night last week from our mother on the telephone that you were going to get what was rightfully mine. She was going to change her Will to include you. I couldn’t believe it! She mentioned it again on Friday, when we met for real. Said she’d already done it…’

‘But you misunderstood! The Will has been proved.’

Posie got her carpet bag and grabbed out the copy of Rosa’s Will, held it up for Dulcie, who read it slowly.

Dulcie swallowed, frowned very slightly. ‘So, you were just getting that trunk, filled with letters? A pack of letters? So mother spoke the truth, at the end? Before she…before she…’

Posie whispered. ‘Before you killed her for nothing. She even went to the special effort of saying in the Will that the letters are worth nothing. She must have known you well, Dulcie; known the jealousy you were capable of.’

Dulcie gave an exaggerated sigh.

‘All of my childhood memories are of my mother sitting in this freezing cold room, at that table, writing those wretched blue letters. I didn’t understand who you were, then, of course. But I knew you must be important: the time and energy she spent on them. They certainly weren’t worth nothing to her! I was always jealous of you.’

Posie rolled her eyes in disbelief. ‘But you had her . You had our mother, Rosa. I had nothing, and I never even got those wretched letters! I don’t know why, but she chose never to send them! What a complete waste.’

Dulcie shrugged. She was being manoeuvred along by Fox, nearly at the door now.

She turned abruptly.

‘I told Mother about you, of course, when I met you a couple of years back. She didn’t act surprised at your success. Said she’d always followed you. I told her to get in touch, but she said she’d ruined your life once: that you had to move on. Oh, and yes: I was watching you today, behind the panelling. I know all those old routes. I had the knife held ready. But I swear to God that I never dashed out into the open of the lounge to see you. Nor ran out and blew a candle out. What do you think I am? Reckless? That must have been someone else entirely.’

Posie was speechless, for once. She licked her dry, cracked lips.

She watched Nicky Carter being escorted out of the room, too. Partners who would never dance again.

What a waste. What an abysmal pair.

But her mother had been right.

You had to move on .

****