6

T

he Turkey Trot was all the rage that season and Fanny Lestrade was determined to master it. More than that, she was determined that her husband should.

‘No, Sholto,’ she screamed as they pirouetted on the terrace. ‘Left foot. Always the left.’

‘But I’m right-handed, Fanny,’ was his only defence.

‘I’m not asking you to dance on your hands, dearest,’ she hissed and caught him a nasty one as their knees collided.

‘How are you on feminism?’ he asked, as the gramophone, mercifully, began to slow down and he could slow down with it.

‘What an odd question.’ She whisked him to the left so that his neck clicked. ‘And don’t think I don’t recognize a subject-change when I hear one. Right leg. Right leg. And ... twist. Oh, wait a minute, I’ll wind up the machine.’

He collapsed gratefully on to the bench while she swept through the French windows and grappled with the apparatus.

‘I did read the other day,’ she called to him, ‘that a woman was arrested for wearing a split skirt in Richmond. What I wasn’t clear about was whether that was illegal or only illegal in Richmond.’ She’d joined him again on the sunlit terrace. ‘Up and out of it, Sholto Lestrade. They’re playing our tune.’

They were. The needle was scratching out, for the umpteenth time that morning, the hit song ‘Hello, Hello, Who’s Your Lady Friend?’ as Fanny twirled Lestrade up out of his seat and down towards the lily pond. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve fallen foul of Mrs Pankhurst again?’

‘Worse.’ Lestrade twirled sideways. ‘A lady called Boadicea.’

Fanny looked at him. ‘I thought she was dead.’ She spun away from him and spun back.

‘Wishful thinking,’ he said. ‘Look, who’s leading?’

‘You’re supposed to be,’ she told him. ‘Do you want to sit this one out?’

Lestrade sighed in gratitude. ‘I thought you’d never ask,’ he said and sank on to a bench again as the strains of the melody lingered on.

‘Lemonade, dear?’ She lifted the jug.

‘Couldn’t make it a Scotch, could you?’

She tutted and tilted up a flower pot overturned on the table by her elbow to reveal a bottle of the amber nectar. ‘The sun isn’t over the bowsprit yet, let alone the yardarm. Ice?’

He looked horrified. ‘Filistine!’ he gasped and fanned himself with his boater. ‘I ran into an old friend of mine the other day. Emily Greenbush.’

‘How old?’ She raised an inquisitorial eyebrow.

‘Old enough!’ he said. ‘She was there when Emily Davison was hurt at the Derby. Cheers, my dear.’

‘You know it’s a mad, mad world, don’t you?’ Fanny asked him.

‘It is.’ He nodded. ‘But why in particular?’

‘I read in The Times yesterday – did you see it? A woman has been made a magistrate – the first in the country. Her name is Emily Dawson. Isn’t that odd. One Emily is elevated by men, the other killed because of them. Insane.’

‘That’s always the way of it,’ Lestrade said. ‘Until January, I always thought that being there, being an eyewitness, would make all the difference – and yet Millicent Millichip died right in front of me and I saw nothing. Even so, I’d kill for a complete account of what happened at the Derby.’

‘But there is one.’ Fanny sipped her lemonade. ‘I read it in the Graphic the other day. The race was filmed.’

‘Filmed?’ Lestrade sat bolt upright.

‘Yes, by a foreigner. A Frenchman I think. Oh, I expect Madison’s thrown the old papers out by now, but I’m sure you can find back copies at the Graphic offices.’

He kissed her suddenly, and as it turned out recklessly, on the lips, because she nipped his moustache with her teeth, open as they were to receive another slug of lemonade. ‘I love you, Fanny Lestrade.’ He winced through the pain.

‘Well, that’s all right, then, isn’t it? Come on.’ And she hauled him upright. ‘This is a policeman’s wife’s excuse-me. Right foot.’ She grabbed his hand and waist. ‘You’re leading.’

* * *

‘SO YOU NORMALLY FILM races involving motor cars, Mr Lartique?’

‘Oui, especially ze Gordon-Bennets and ze ’ill-climbs.’

‘But on June 4th you decided to take moving pictures of the Derby?’

‘Oui, and in a moment you will see just ’ow moving. If I can just ...’ He was wrestling with the juddering apparatus in the darkness of the bowels of Scotland Yard. ‘... release zis sprocket from ze ... ah, zat’s it.’

A jerky grey blob appeared on the far wall, from which Constables Tait and Lyall had moved the lockers, sergeants, for the use of. The blob gave way to the image of a lady in an enormous feathered hat, grinning at the camera.

‘Pardon,’ apologized M. Lartique. ‘Madame Lartique.’ He banged his fist down on the apparatus and it jolted into motion. A young girl was cavorting with another by the seaside, their nipples surprisingly prominent under their striped swimsuits.

‘Merde!’ the projectionist growled and instantly shut the machine down. ‘Film editors! Zey are ze pits. I have no idea who zose women are and I categorically deny zat I took ze footage.’ He began to crank the thing on by hand. ‘Ah.’ He peered through the viewer. ‘Zis is it. Zis is ze Derby.’

King George and Queen Mary tottered into view on the wall. Constable Lyall was crunching popcorn until a glance from the guv’nor made him put it away. Tait was sure that Her Majesty winked at him, but it must have been a trick of the light. The camera of M. Lartique panned along the excited crowds gathering on Epsom Downs, in a riot of feathers and shining black toppers. In an instant, Lartique’s lens was down in the paddock, hobnobbing with the horse owners with large buttonholes, prodding jockeys in their jodhpurs, horses in their numnahs. At last the bobbing camera was still, pointing at the fatal bend.

‘Now I was on top of a Darracq wiz my tripod,’ the cameraman explained. ‘Normally, of course, I take ze still pictures. Zis one is moving about.’

It was. The crowd moved as one, craning to see around the bend into the straight. The outsiders were visible first.

‘Zere is Mister Major,’ explained Lartique. ‘Ze grey. And next to ’im is Zane, annuzer grey. Zat is ...’ But Lestrade wasn’t watching the horses or listening to the Frenchman’s running commentary. Instead, he was watching the crowd to the right of the rail, swaying, chattering. Here and there, binoculars came up or hats were thrown. Then he saw it. A woman was hoisted up on to the rail by male hands. She seemed to be holding something, fluttering, streaming out in the wind. Then she turned, twisting away, glancing down behind her, her fists in the air, her hat gone. She seemed to slip, thrown forward over the rail and the charging horse hit her as she fell. And as the animal’s rump rose high in the air, Lestrade saw it. On the saddle cloth, where Herbert Jones’s bum had been seconds before, Anmer’s number. Fourteen. The same number printed on the red calling card that had killed Worsthorne Griffin two months before.

The wall went blank.

‘Is that it?’ shouted Lestrade.

‘Of course.’ The cameraman unshuttered his equipment and began to rewind the spool. ‘At zat moment I stopped filming and rushed to do what I could.’

‘Which was?’ Lestrade asked.

‘Nothing,’ Lartique admitted.

Lestrade threw his hands in the air. It was rather a Gallic gesture for a man who had never been further East than Lowestoft. ‘Did you see Miss Davison taken away?’

‘Oui.’

‘By a doctor, name of Cole.’

Lartique shrugged. ‘I do not know ’is name. I only know ’e drove a Mephisto.’

‘A what?’

‘A Mephisto Fiat. One of ze finest racing cars in ze world, Monsieur Le Strade. I know. I ’ave driven one. She ’andles like a woman, soft, receptive, melting ...’

A silence had descended on the basement and Lartique cleared his throat, slightly disconcerted by the look on the faces of Tait and Lyall.

‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘in ze ’ands of Lancia ’imself, ze car is unbeatable.’

‘And Miss Davison was driven off in this car?’ Lestrade checked.

‘Oui.’

‘Mephisto,’ Tait suddenly said. ‘What does that mean, Mr Lartique?’

‘Mean?’ the Frenchman’s voice echoed inside the tube of his cinematograph machine as he blew out the dust. ‘It means ze devil, Constable. Mephistopheles is ze devil ’imself.’

* * *

THE OFFICES OF MESSRS Constable were in Orange Street, a few doors down from that little shop where Mr Churchill, the gun expert, sold twelve bores to the gentry, when he wasn’t helping Scotland Yard with their inquiries.

An enchanting little filly sat at the counter on the morning Lestrade arrived. ‘Mr Somerset Maugham?’

‘No,’ Lestrade told her. ‘My name is Lestrade. I’m here to see Mr Allardyce.’

The enchanting filly rummaged through her desk diary. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she trilled. ‘I don’t appear to have you down. Was it Crocheting for Profit and Pleasure or The Role of Wallpaper in Napoleon’s Career you submitted?’

‘Neither, I’m afraid,’ Lestrade said. ‘I’m from Scotland Yard.’

‘Ah.’ The filly picked up the business end of a speaking tube. ‘That’ll be I Caught Crippen. You’re using the pen name “Chief Inspector Dew”. Crafty.’

Lestrade was about to protest that he’d never take Walter Dew’s name in vain when the filly waved her hand and shouted into the tube, ‘Mr Allardyce? Mr Dew is here for you, sir ... Mr Dew ... Chief Inspector ... Scotland Yard.’ She smiled at Lestrade, then half turned her back and spoke sotto voce into the mouthpiece. ‘You know, that ghastly tosh about catching Crippen ...’

But Lestrade had placed a hand over the tube. ‘Which floor?’ he asked.

The filly looked horrified. Obviously, she’d been less than discreet. ‘Um ... third ...’ she said. ‘But you can’t ...’

But Lestrade had. He bounded up the stairs two at a time while in the filly’s view, then slowed down to a more sedate one at a time on the turn of the stairs. Allardyce’s office was straight ahead.

‘On his way up?’ he heard the editor say as the door crashed back. Allardyce stared at him, the mouthpiece still in his hand. He seemed to subside. ‘Jessica, my pet,’ he hissed into the tube. ‘This is Superintendent Lestrade, not Chief Inspector Dew. Remind me to fire you at the next possible opportunity ... What?’ Lestrade saw a guilty smirk appear on Allardyce’s face. ‘Oh, all right, then. But don’t forget the clotted cream.’ And he put the tube down. ‘Mr Lestrade.’ He stood up and extended a hand. ‘Good to see you again. Coffee?’

‘Thank you, no.’ Lestrade accepted the proffered chair.

‘You don’t mind if I do?’ Allardyce busied himself with a steaming machine behind him that gurgled and gasped like a retired general. ‘It’s been a bitch of a morning, frankly. See that?’

He waved in the direction of a pile of papers on his desk. Lestrade saw it.

‘Anthony Hope’s latest. Return to Zenda, it’s called. Well, it’s not a patch on the first. Even Rupert of Hentzau was all right, but this one ... Hopeless, I’m afraid. But you didn’t come to listen to the whinges of an editor, I feel sure.’

‘The car,’ Lestrade said. ‘The car involved in the hit-and-run at Hyde Park Corner. I never asked you the make.’

‘The make?’ Allardyce frowned.

‘Unless you don’t know one car from another ...’

‘Oh, but I do. I even do a spot of driving myself. Drove at Brooklands, once ...’

‘Brooklands,’ Lestrade repeated.

‘It’s a racecourse in Surrey,’ Allardyce told him.

‘I know,’ Lestrade said. ‘It’s just that it’s a name that’s cropping up a lot lately.’

‘Well, the car, I’m pretty sure, was a Mephisto. Quite an unusual one to find touring London in a pea-souper.’

‘Why?’ Lestrade asked.

‘Well, it’s a racing jalopy, Mr Lestrade. Designed by the Italians to cope with hill-climbs and hairpin bends. Do you know, it does nought to thirty in four point eight minutes?’

‘Get away!’ Lestrade was impressed. Many was the hour he’d had to coax his Lanchester out of the stable. Only the previous year he’d gone to his doctor with cranker’s elbow.

‘But all this is in the report I gave to the constable,’ Allardyce told him, stretching out with his feet on the desk.

‘Indeed.’ Lestrade nodded. ‘Tell me about the constable.’

‘The constable? Well, let me see. He was ... middle-aged. Standard height – for a policeman, I mean. Letter F on his collar. Took notes very fast, I remember. I was impressed.’

‘Yes,’ Lestrade said. ‘Those letters on his collar bother me.’

‘Oh?’ Allardyce raised an eyebrow. ‘Why?’

‘F Division is in Paddington. Your constable was patrolling in A Division’s manor.’

‘Well, I didn’t ask him what Division he was in. He was asking all the questions. He did tell me his name, though.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. Smith. Alexander Smith. Tell me, Mr Lestrade, was there something odd about this policeman? Something I should know?’

‘When I know it, Mr Allardyce,’ the superintendent said, ‘rest assured I shall tell you ...’

But Lestrade wasn’t telling Allardyce anything. There was no Alexander Smith in F Division.

A shrill whistle shattered the morning. ‘Yes, Jessica?’ Allardyce had picked up the tube. ‘When? Who? John Adams? Never heard of him. Oh, all right. Yes. Yes.’ He reached across Hope’s tome. ‘Yes, here it is. When did he leave it? Well, he may have insisted, but you really mustn’t let any Tom, Dick or Harry into my office, you know. Yes.’ His sharp tone had left him. ‘All right, yes. Thursday. Oh, and don’t forget the fly whisk.’ And he put the mouthpiece back.

He held up another pile of paper. ‘Unsolicited,’ he said. ‘Yet again. I do wish these people wouldn’t just leave things like this. What’s wrong with a letter, a synopsis?’

Lestrade commiserated with the man. Even so, he thought an operation was going a bit far. He saw himself out and at the bottom of the stairs, Jessica was purring into the mouthpiece again, discussing all kinds of kitchen utensils and their uses.

* * *

THE LIGHT BURNED BLUE late at the Yard that night. The glow of sunset had died away and Sholto Lestrade sat in his creaking office chair while detectives lit lamps around him and pens scratched on paper.

‘They’re tied up,’ Lestrade said to Blevvins for the umpteenth time that night. ‘Don’t ask me how, but they’re connected. Worsthorne Griffin dies of a heart attack after receiving a card with the number 14 on it – the same number as on the king’s horse at the Derby. That horse killed Emily Davison. And the dying woman was carried away by a doctor in a Mephisto racing car, the same make of car that ploughed into Robert Peel at Hyde Park Corner. Are we chasing shadows, Sergeant?’

There was a snore from the corner. ‘Blevvins!’ Lestrade snapped.

‘Uh? Oh, sorry, guv. Dozed off a bit there, I’m afraid. You were saying?’

Lestrade threw his cigar butt into his empty cup. ‘I was saying, go home, Blevvins. And don’t talk to any strange women.’

‘Oh, righto, guv.’ And Blevvins reached for his hat. He nearly collided on his way out of the office with a world-weary Inspector Kane, boater in hand, breath in fist. They mumbled to each other as implacable foes do and Kane plonked himself down on Lestrade’s second-hand Chesterfield.

‘Sorry, guv,’ he said. ‘You don’t mind, do you? It’s been a long day.’

‘It has that, John,’ the superintendent agreed. ‘Knocking off?’

‘Well, I would,’ the inspector said. ‘But something’s come up.’

‘Not your number, I hope.’ Lestrade smiled. ‘I’m chasing numbers myself at the moment.’

‘Does the name Thomas Allardyce mean anything to you?’

‘Allardyce? Yes. He’s a witness to that hit-and-run back in the pea-souper in January. Why?’

‘When did you see him last?’

‘When?’ Lestrade fished for his half hunter. ‘Er ... twelve hours ago, give or take. Why do you ask?’

‘He’s in the London Free,’ Kane told him. ‘Acute poisoning.’

‘What?’ Lestrade sat upright, suddenly aware that John Kane was looking at him intently.

‘Can you be exact, guv?’ the inspector asked him. ‘About the time you left him, I mean?’

‘Er ... no.’ Lestrade tried to think. ‘No, not exactly. It was gone eleven, I think. I was with him ... what ... twenty minutes, I suppose. How did you get involved?’

‘Call from C Division. Sam Weatherley.’

‘“Buck-passer” Weatherley? Is he still trying it on?’

‘Said he wasn’t “up” on poisons. Wondered if HQ could help. He got through to the policeman’s policeman, who got through to me.’

Lestrade shrugged. ‘Yes, that’s the chain of command, all right.’ He nodded. ‘So how is Allardyce?’

‘Well, he’s stable now, but it was touch and go this afternoon. Constable contacted us. A distraught woman on the other end of the line.’

‘Jessica,’ Lestrade said.

‘That’s the one.’ Kane nodded. ‘She seemed very solicitous. Nice to find such loyal employees.’

‘Yes,’ Lestrade said. ‘Although I think you’ll find she’s at her most loyal on Thursdays in the company of clotted cream and a fly whisk.’

‘Good God!’ Kane said.

‘I know.’ Lestrade raised his hands in the air. ‘I don’t know what the world’s coming to. Temptation is a wicked thing, isn’t it? I’m just glad we haven’t got any women on the staff here.’

‘Ah, you haven’t heard about Mrs Robley-Brown, then?’ Kane looked almost apologetic.

‘No.’ Lestrade raised an eyebrow. ‘But I’ve a feeling I’m going to.’

‘She’s one of a group of women raised by Miss Nina Boyle who seems convinced that girls crying “rape” are being mishandled by male officers.’

‘I suspect what narks Miss Boyle,’ Lestrade observed, ‘is that they are being handled at all.’

‘Quite,’ Kane agreed. ‘Anyway, Mrs Robley-Brown patrols up and down Shaftesbury Avenue in a uniform of her own design.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, it’s pink. Lots of tulle.’

‘Subtle, at least.’ Lestrade nodded. ‘Why is Shaftesbury Avenue so lucky?’

‘Well, apparently, Mrs Robley-Brown takes luncheon at the Trocadero and tea at Pattinson’s Patisserie. That sort of shapes her manor. And the length of her shift.’

‘God save us!’ Lestrade sighed. ‘So the solicitous secretary called the law?’

‘She did,’ Kane said. ‘As soon as Allardyce collapsed, she was on the blower,’

‘You’ve talked to Allardyce?’

‘He wasn’t very coherent. Rambling a little. In and out, if you know what I mean.’

‘What were his symptoms?’

‘Stomach pains. Slow pulse, the doctor said.’

‘Colour of vomit?’

‘Green as grass,’ Kane told him.

‘Hmm.’ Lestrade nodded. ‘Digitalis would be my guess. The purple foxglove.’

‘Well.’ Kane sighed, rubbing his burning eyes. ‘No shortage of that in Orange Street of a Tuesday morning.’

‘Try the coffee,’ Lestrade suggested.

‘What?’

‘You haven’t been to his office?’

‘Haven’t had time.’

‘Well, do it tomorrow, John, when you’ve had a few hours’ kip. He’s got one of these new Cona coffee machines. Give the glass bit to the boffins on the fourth floor. If it hasn’t been washed out, I think you’ll find the odd tincture of Digitalis purpurea at the bottom.’

‘So, what are we saying?’ Kane asked his boss. ‘That the coffee makers of Brazil are careless in their bean-picking?’

Lestrade thought for a moment. ‘Tom Allardyce was a witness to a murder, John,’ he said softly. ‘I don’t think Brazil has anything to do with it. Unless, of course, our man is mad.’

‘Mad, guv?’

‘Don’t you know your Charley’s Aunt? That’s where the nuts come from.’

* * *

MR MIDDLEMASS OF TWININGS was co-operation itself. By lunchtime the next day, John Kane knew all about the medicinal properties of coffee, vouchsafed by the great Arab physician Avicenna. He knew that Anthony Sherley introduced the drink to London and that beans cost £5 an ounce. And back in 1621, that was no trifling amount. John Evelyn, having little better to do at Oxford than write his diary, Volume One, met a Greek called Nathaniel Conopios who drank the stuff regularly. No, Mr Middlemass assured the inspector, it never contained extract of foxglove and was utterly harmless. In fact, the caffeine that coffee contained was enervating and nourishing and, in Mr Middlemass’s experience, did wonders for the cuticles. Messrs Twinings delivered coffee and tea to Messrs Constable on a regular basis and had never had any complaints. Mr Middlemass was certain that whatever had incommoded Mr Allardyce, it was not Twinings’s coffee.

But it was. John Kane was a good copper. Years at the knees of Frank Froest and Fred Wensley and Sholto Lestrade – the big three as they were known in those days – had not been wasted. Kane leaned, in the time-honoured tradition, on the boffin on the fourth floor and he came up with the findings that Allardyce’s coffee machine, lifted from Allardyce’s office only that morning, did indeed contain traces of digitalis.

‘Who made his coffee?’ Kane’s dark eyes burned intensely into the blank face of the poisoned man’s secretary.

‘I did,’ she said, her moist lip quivering slightly.

‘How?’ Kane asked her.

‘Well, I put the paper in and sprinkled the coffee on to it. Tom ... Mr Allardyce ... likes his coffee black, so I added another spoonful.’

‘And this is how you always made it?’

‘Yes. Ever since Mr Allardyce had the machine installed. It’s an American idea. Apparently, it’s all the rage in Chicago and on Wall Street.’

‘Wall Street?’ Kane repeated.

‘That’s in New York.’ Jessica showed off her encyclopaedic knowledge of the Atlas. ‘Littlejohn and Robin use it all the time.’

‘They do?’

‘Yes. They’re our American outlet, experimenting with a floppy-covered book they call a paperback. It’ll never catch on, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Kane agreed. ‘What time did you make Mr Allardyce’s coffee?’

‘Ten o’clock,’ Jessica remembered. ‘As he arrived.’

‘He arrived at ten every day?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Except Fridays.’ And she blushed suddenly, crimson to her hair roots.

‘You made the coffee as usual.’ Kane ignored it. ‘Nothing different?’

‘No. I told you ...’

‘I know you did. It’s just that this time, Miss Fry, there were traces of digitalis in it. Poison.’

‘Oh, no.’ Her hand rose to her lips. ‘That’s not possible.’

‘Really? You called the police. You must have had reason to suppose ...’

‘I called everybody.’ She sobbed quietly. ‘The police, the ambulance, the fire brigade. I ... panicked, I’m afraid.’ And the tears welled up and burst out into uncontrollable floods. John Kane, it has to be said, was a sucker for a pretty woman in trouble. He whisked out his extra-large mansize hanky, the spotless one he kept just for such moments, and patted Jessica’s shoulder while she blew into it with the volume and finesse of a Clyde tanker.

‘I have a confession to make,’ she sniffed.

‘Oh?’ Kane stopped his patting.

‘Tom and I ... well, we are something of an item,’ she told him.

‘Really?’

‘Of course, only on Thursdays.’

‘Of course.’ He nodded. Such omniscient patience had he learned from the great Lestrade himself.

‘Mrs Allardyce goes Quantity Surveying on Thursdays.’

‘Quantity Surveying?’ Kane’s eyes narrowed.

‘At the Polytechnic. That leaves Tom and me alone in Hammersmith.’

Which sounded like a fate worse than death to Kane, but he didn’t like to say so. ‘Do I assume that Mrs Allardyce is not aware of this situation?’

‘Oh, God, no.’ Jessica shuddered. ‘She thinks Tom is in the local Cribbage Club. Oh, Inspector.’ She leaned towards him. ‘I’d never do anything to hurt dear Tom. He’s the sole reason I came to work for Constable – apart from the fact that they’re marvellous employers, of course. Until today, the future looked so bright; the future was Orange Street.’

‘Until today ...’ Kane frowned. ‘Mr Allardyce will be all right, Miss Fry,’ he explained. ‘Whoever laced his coffee didn’t get the blend right. Now, tell me, who might have had a reason to want him dead?’

Jessica blew one last time and handed the soggy linen back. ‘Well, it’s a cut-throat business, modern publishing,’ she said. ‘I know he was about to turn down Mr Hope. The other day, he was less than enthusiastic about People My Father Knew by Megan Lloyd George.’

‘Lloyd George?’ Kane echoed.

‘Yes.’ Jessica sniffed. ‘I believe he’s the Chancellor of the Exchequer.’

‘Yes.’ The inspector smiled. ‘I have heard it said. So, do failed authors really kill their publishers?’

‘A rejection slip is a terrible thing, Mr Kane. It’s like the black spot. I’ve got a horrible feeling that Tom would have turned Mr Stevenson down, had the two of them met.’

‘Yes.’ Kane nodded. ‘He should have stuck to railways, I think. Tell me, did anyone come to see Mr Allardyce that morning?’

‘Er ... yes. That nasty little man calling himself Chief Inspector Dew. Of course, that was peculiar.’

‘What was?’

‘Well.’ She checked that they were alone in the chintz-laden reception room. ‘His real name, it transpires, is Lestrade. And he’s not a chief inspector at all; he’s a superintendent. But you must know him, surely?’

‘Oh, you know.’ Kane grinned. ‘Ships that pass in the night. Do you know why he came to see Mr Allardyce?’

‘No. But he behaved very oddly. Giving a false name and shooting up the stairs without an appointment. Is that normal police procedure?’

‘Normal, no,’ Kane conceded. ‘But it may well be police procedure. Was there anyone else?’

‘Um ... oh, yes, a Mr Adams called. John Adams. I told him Tom hadn’t arrived – this was before ten – but he insisted he left a manuscript in his office.’

‘And did he?’

‘I don’t know ... wait. Yes, yes he did, because I rang Tom, while Mr Lestrade was there in fact, and told him Mr Adams had left the manuscript somewhere and Tom said he’d found it on his desk.’

‘Did you know this Adams?’

‘No.’ Jessica shook her head. ‘I didn’t know him from Adam.’

‘Would you know him again?’

Jessica frowned. ‘I really don’t know,’ she said. ‘I doubt it. He was middle-aged, dark hair, rather small eyes. Rather nondescript, really.’

‘And he was alone in Mr Allardyce’s office?’

‘Yes, but only for a few seconds. It didn’t take me long to haul up my skirts and hare after him. I was the Under Eighteens Uphill Sprint Champion at school, so he can’t have had much time.’

‘And you, at this stage, hadn’t made the coffee?’

‘No.’

‘But when Mr Lestrade was there?’

‘Tom was already drinking.’

‘You don’t know exactly when he took his first cup, I suppose?’

‘No.’

‘It’s lucky he didn’t have more than two. As it was, the stomach pump jammed.’

‘Oh dear.’ Jessica’s lip quivered again. ‘The poor darling.’

‘I’d like to see Mr Allardyce’s office, now.’ Kane stood up. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’d like to see it alone.’

* * *

A RATHER AWFUL PHOTOGRAPH of Mr de Vere Stacpoole grinned smugly from one wall and an even worse one of Miss Marie Corelli from another. But it wasn’t the decor Kane was interested in. One of Sam Weatherby’s lads had already half-inched the coffee maker for forensic purposes, but this was the first time a detective had been in this room since the visit of Superintendent Lestrade. He was careful with his dabs, though from the state of the place, every copper, ambulance driver and fireman in London had already careered through it, several times. He mechanically checked Allardyce’s drawers. Manuscripts spilled out in an untidy profusion; pens cluttered the desk furniture. He picked up a handwritten book – Return to Zenda – and read the opening paragraph – ‘I wonder when in the world you’re going to do anything, Rudolf?’ said my brother’s wife.

‘My dear Rose,’ I answered, laying down my egg-spoon. ‘Why in the world should I do anything? I’ve already impersonated my distant cousin King Rudolph the Fifth and had all those rattling adventures with Sapt and von Tarlenheim... ’ – and if he hadn’t still been standing up, Kane would probably have fallen asleep. He dropped the manuscript as Tom Allardyce had already done and picked up another. It was called I Caught Crippen and was written by Chief Inspector Walter Dew on an upright Remington of the type they used at the Yard. But it was a third manuscript that caught Kane’s eye. It was called Thirty-five Years at the Yard and the author’s name was Sholto Joseph Lestrade. What caught Kane’s eye even more was the line scrawled across it in what seemed, from other examples lying around, to be Tom Allardyce’s handwriting. ‘What appalling rubbish. Tell this idiot he’s wasting his time. T. A.’

Well, well, well, Kane mused. His old guv’nor had literary ambitions he hadn’t dreamed of. And these literary ambitions lay rejected on the desk of a man visited only yesterday by that same old guv’nor; on the desk of a man who had narrowly missed death by digitalis poisoning.

* * *

LESTRADE SHOULD HAVE taken a holiday that July, but what with the time he’d lost through his fall from the Titanic, he thought it only right to soldier on, his shoulder to the wheel, his nose to the crimestone. The truth was, it was as though the murk and silence of the pea-souper had never left him. Everywhere he turned, he faced brick walls, wreathed in fog, an intangible something just out of his reach. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he had a visit, at the Yard, from Alaric Bligh.

‘Mr Lestrade, I’m not one to carp,’ the managing director said. ‘But you did intimate, nearly three months ago now, that poor old Worsthorne Griffin was done to death, did you not?’

‘It is my belief, sir, yes. Would you like a Peek Frean?’

‘No, sir!’ Bligh bellowed. ‘I would like a few answers. How are your inquiries going? Why, after your initial sortie, have you not questioned my staff? What about the other houses in the City? And have you considered Morant?’

‘Morant?’

Alaric Bligh sat back in his chair. ‘I won’t have it said that I’m a vindictive man,’ he said. ‘But Charles Morant is the one man on the Stock Exchange I’d not turn my back on.’

‘Tell me more,’ said Lestrade.

‘He’s known as “Broker” Morant in the City,’ Bligh told him. ‘Made his first million before he was twenty-four. A child prodigy, Lestrade, and clever with it. Mind like a razor.’

‘What makes you suspect him?’ Lestrade asked.

‘He’d sell his own granny down the river. Back in ’95 that was. He did it for a bet. Made a few hundred that day, I believe. Of course, the old girl was frightfully upset, not being terribly dapper on the tiller.’

‘She was in a boat?’ Lestrade checked.

‘Lord, no, tied blindfold to a raft. The bet was, would she make it to Teddington before a lighter got her. There was hell to pay with the port authorities. Of course, Broker’s father thrashed him to within an inch of his life.’

‘The old girl was his mother?’ Lestrade asked.

‘No, the raft was an heirloom the elder Morant’s grandfather had built. Could have been damaged. That’s the sort of people they are, Lestrade. Scum of the earth, in fact.’

‘Indeed,’ Lestrade concurred. ‘But what is the link with Mr Griffin?’

‘Well.’ Bligh leaned forward confidentially. ‘That’s just it. Morant is with Dewsman Porter, Lombard Street. They’re renowned for insider dealing – handled the Marconi business.’

‘Indeed?’ Lestrade said again, this time in the form of a question.

‘But that isn’t all.’

‘It isn’t?’

‘No. You remember that peculiar calling card you showed me? The one with the devil’s head on it?’

‘And the number 14 on the back? Yes, I do.’

‘Well, you asked me at the time if it meant anything to me and I said it didn’t.’

‘And?’

‘And ...’ Bligh looked carefully around him, as though the wastepaper baskets and shoe-boxes had ears. ‘I’ve been unable to get that devil’s face out of my head since. And suddenly, just yesterday it came to me. Broker Morant has a racehorse. It ran in the Derby last month.’

‘Did it now?’ Lestrade sat up.

‘Know what its name was, Lestrade?’ the stockman asked.

The superintendent shook his head.

‘El Diablo,’ said Bligh, the silence after he spoke sending little shivers up the spine of Sholto Lestrade. ‘That’s Spanish for the devil.’