“We should do nothing of the sort,” said Iris. “We’d be interfering in a police investigation. We are not equipped—”
“You are,” said Gwen.
“I most certainly am not. What gave you that idea?”
“You’re smart. Much smarter than most. And you know a great deal about many things that would help us find the truth of this matter.”
“You’re daft, my dear,” began Iris, then she stopped as Gwen’s face flushed. “Oh, God. Forgive me, please. I know you hate to be called names.”
“No, no,” said Gwen, breathing slowly to calm herself. “I’m being—sensitive. One of my faults.”
“One of your strengths, rather,” said Iris. “Sensitive is certainly a word no one has ever applied to me. I’m the proverbial bull in the china shop.”
“Cow,” said Gwen.
“I’ve been called that a few times in other contexts,” said Iris. “I wonder why only bulls qualify for that expression?”
“Because males blunder about and do more damage,” said Gwen. “A cow in a china shop would look at the lovely patterns and think about having some tea. With milk. Look, here’s a thing that bothers me. That stationery was ours. How did whoever forged that letter get in here?”
“Picked the lock,” Iris said promptly. “The lock on our office door isn’t that difficult if you know what you’re doing.”
“You could pick it, couldn’t you?” asked Gwen.
“Er, maybe,” said Iris.
“You can,” Gwen stated confidently. “Part of that war-time training you never talk about? Or was that at Cambridge as well?”
“I can’t—”
“You can’t answer that, I know,” said Gwen. “So, our murderer has both forgery and lock-picking amongst his skills. Is that a common combination in your experience?”
“Not usually,” replied Iris. Then she shot Gwen a dirty look. “In my experience,” she repeated, “your interrogation skills can be impressive. You’ve got more out of me than anyone.”
“I see you more than anyone,” said Gwen. “I know you better, even with your secrets. So, who would have done this? Who could have killed that poor girl?”
“We don’t know enough about her to speculate,” said Iris. “My instinct would be a jealous lover.”
“Mine as well. Which means we need to find out more about Miss La Salle.”
“No, we do not. It’s not our business.”
“If they hang Dickie Trower, will you rest easy in that belief? We must investigate.”
“My goodness,” said Iris, staring at her in astonishment. “When did you turn into Bulldog Drummond?”
“It’s the right thing to do. And I can’t do it without you.”
“No,” said Iris. “And that is my last word on the subject. I have a letter to retype, and a typewriter to clean and console, and a business to run.”
“Which reminds me—we should return Miss La Salle’s fee to her family.”
“Oh, hell!” cried Iris in chagrin.
“You know that we should.”
“Yes, yes,” said Iris. “It’s absolutely proper. I wish that she hadn’t been our only new customer in the last week and a half. And I wish I hadn’t celebrated that fact by treating myself to a night out.”
“Are our funds so short?” asked Gwen in concern.
“Well, we still haven’t received our marriage fee from the Cornwalls,” said Iris. “In fact, that was the very letter I was working upon when we were so rudely interrupted.”
“They still haven’t paid? Did you not send them the Inquiry Polite?”
“A week ago,” replied Iris, rolling a fresh sheet of paper into the typewriter. “I am now working on the Rebuke Stern, but I have a bad feeling about them. They both seemed dodgy.”
“Which is why we thought they would suit each other,” remembered Gwen. “What comes next if the Rebuke Stern produces nothing? The Threat Litigious?”
“I was thinking that we should go straight to Sally,” said Iris, typing away furiously.
“Oh, dear. Not Sally.”
“You disapprove?”
“You know how I feel about Sally. Sally unnerves me.”
“Sally unnerves everyone,” said Iris. “That’s the point of Sally.”
“Promise me you won’t resort to Sally until we see the results of the Rebuke Stern,” said Gwen.
“I promise,” said Iris.
She finished the letter, signed it with what she hoped was an angry signature, then sealed it in an envelope. She held it in her hand for a moment after she affixed the stamp.
“Did you notice the postmark?” she asked thoughtfully.
“What postmark?” asked Gwen.
“On the fake letter to Dickie. It wasn’t from around here. It was from the Croydon Post Office.”
Gwen thumbed through her file box and produced Dickie Trower’s card.
“He lives in Croydon,” she said. “What do you make of that?”
“If he wanted to fake a letter to himself as a plausible excuse for breaking the date, he’d be more likely to mail it in his own neighbourhood,” said Iris. “That would make certain it was delivered more quickly.”
“Do you think the police will have come to that conclusion already?”
“Most likely,” said Iris.
Gwen looked dolefully at the fingerprints and powder covering the filing cabinet.
“We have no cleaning supplies,” she noted. “I’m going to borrow some from Mister MacPherson.”
She went down the steps, lost in thought, and sought out MacPherson’s rooms in the basement. A sporadic trail of bare yellow bulbs buzzing in their sockets lit the hallway and the doors concealing the boiler and the electricals. Gwen had only been down here twice, the first time being when the custodian had given them the tour of the building and insisted on showing them the equipment stored for its maintenance. Equipment that she almost never saw put to actual use since they had moved in.
She also knew there was a thriving community of rats down there, and she hoped to make her visit short.
She came to MacPherson’s door—badly in need of painting, but who would care to inspect it? It did have an actual brass plaque, with “Angus MacPherson, Senior Custodian” engraved on it.
She was unaware of the existence of any junior custodian during their tenure there. Perhaps he had been taken by rats, or lived some Renfieldian existence in the shadows behind the boiler.
She rapped lightly on the door. There was no reply. She knocked again more firmly, and there was a sudden strangled cry and a crash.
She went through the door quickly to find the old man getting up from the floor beside a camp cot at the rear of the room.
“Don’t you know better than to disturb a man when he’s sleeping?” he roared.
“My apologies,” said Gwen. “I didn’t know that was on your agenda.”
“For future reference, I have a bit of a kip in the late morning,” he said. “I am not to be disturbed then except for the direst of emergencies.”
“Duly noted,” said Gwen. “I confess that this is not such an occasion.”
“Social visit, then?” asked MacPherson.
She thought that she detected a hint of hopefulness in the question.
“I’m afraid not,” she said. “I was wondering if I might borrow some cleaning supplies. Nothing too toxic or industrial, please.”
“Cleaning supplies?” he repeated. “What’s the nature of the befoulment of my property?”
“Your property?”
“Mine to manage. Was there an accident?”
“No. We had a visit from the police.”
“The police?” he exclaimed, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. “I thought you were running a respectable establishment.”
“We are,” said Gwen. “But one of our clients—well, that’s neither here nor there. Do you have anything suitable for cleaning metal surfaces?”
He went over to a shelf holding a number of spray bottles and selected one. Then he plucked a rag from a hook on the wall and handed them both to her. She accepted the rag gingerly, wondering if it might more likely transfer grime to a surface than remove it.
There was an array of keys hanging from hooks below the shelf.
“You have a spare set for our office?” she asked.
“For every office,” he said. “Why?”
“In case I ever mislay mine,” she said. “It’s good to know about. Thank you, Mister MacPherson.”
She climbed the stairs.
“It’s late afternoon, isn’t it?” she asked when she walked back inside their office.
“It is,” said Iris. “Why?”
“Mister MacPherson exists in a different time zone than we do,” said Gwen. “Or else he is a prodigious napper.”
“Either explains much,” said Iris. “Drink would explain more. Would you like me to do that? I suspect that you’ve never cleaned fingerprints before.”
“I have to learn sometime,” said Gwen.
She sprayed and wiped down the file cabinet, then handed over the bottle and rag to Iris who tenderly applied them to her Bar-Let.
“Where would Dickie be now?” asked Gwen, watching her.
“Jail,” said Iris. “Bound over for Assizes or Quarter Sessions, I suppose. I don’t know which handles murder cases.”
“Will he have bail?”
“I doubt it.”
“Which jail would he be kept in?”
“Brixton, I should think.”
“Right,” said Gwen. “How do I get there?”
Iris looked at her partner appraisingly. Gwen was sitting up straight in her chair, staring out the window, seeing something other than the view of the sunlight waning over London.
“It’s so interesting that you think I know the answer to that,” said Iris.
“You’re the one with friends in low places,” Gwen reminded her. “And Cambridge. I thought between the two, you might have visited the Brixton jail upon occasion.”
“I’m more of a Wormwood Scrubs girl,” said Iris, opening a drawer. “All the best criminals go there.”
She pulled out a folded map and handed it across.
“Time to learn the bus routes, dear,” she said.
“Thank you,” said Gwen, unfolding and studying it carefully. “I’ll be coming in late tomorrow.”
“Oh, golly,” sighed Iris, staring at the vastness of the empty space between them and the door. “I do hope that I can handle the rush of business. Give Mister Trower my regards.”
“I will,” promised Gwen.
Iris lay next to Andrew, her mind elsewhere despite his thoughtful ministrations.
“Your name came up today,” he said.
“Did it? Casual reminiscences? Nostalgia for pre-war party girls?”
“The Brigadier says that you telephoned. He wanted to know more about what you were doing with this business enterprise of yours.”
“He asked you?”
“He did.”
“He knows about us. Damn.”
“It’s his job to know about the people working for him. And the people who used to work for him. Especially when they get involved in murder cases.”
“Are you interrogating me on his behalf?” asked Iris, shoving his hands away from her and sitting up. “Your technique is wanting.”
“You’ve never complained about my technique before,” he said, grinning. “No, I’m not interrogating you. I’m merely curious as to why you didn’t mention the murder. I would think it would be the principal topic of discussion.”
“I didn’t see that it would set the proper mood,” said Iris. “I wanted to make love, not talk about dead girls.”
“Still—”
“I only have you for a few nights out of a blue moon,” said Iris. “I want to make the most of them. And I don’t like the Brigadier knowing about us.”
“He approves, for what it’s worth,” said Andrew. “He’d rather my infidelities be with one of us than, say, a fetching Russky lass.”
“He still thinks of me as one of us? One of you, I should say?”
“As he put it, you’re family.”
“Oh, I dislike that intensely,” she said, hugging her knees to her chest. “It makes this all sound incestuous.”
“Well, I don’t think of it that way,” said Andrew. “So, what was the murder about? Did you do it?”
“Stop,” said Iris. “It isn’t a joking matter. One of our clients, a young woman, was stabbed to death a few days after signing with us. They arrested the man with whom we arranged her first date.”
“And you feel responsible.”
“I do not. People kill each other occasionally, and that’s got nothing to do with me. It happened, they arrested someone, and it’s all over but the hanging.”
“Unfortunate. How is your partner handling the situation?’
“Oh, God, she’s convinced that the fellow is completely innocent. She wants us to drop everything and go investigate it.”
Andrew began to laugh.
“What?” Iris asked, glaring at him.
“Just picturing the two of you, banging about where the police fear to tread,” he said. “Has she any skills in the area?”
“Apart from a frighteningly accurate ability to read people, none,” said Iris. “But she also has something I’ve never had and never will have.”
“Which is?”
“Goodness,” said Iris simply. “She’s a good person. She’s actually a good person. I’m in business with a good person. Me. Who is not a good person. Who is neither a person who is good nor good at being a person. It’s laughable that I’m mixed up in the marriage-making business. Mike was right.”
“Mike? Which Mike?”
“Ah, the gentleman perks up. I didn’t tell you the worst part.”
“Worse than a girl getting herself stabbed to death?”
“All right, not as bad as that. Among the investigators is one Detective Sergeant Michael Kinsey.”
“Really? How extraordinary! How was the reunion?”
“Tense. Tortured. Everything one could have hoped for upon encountering an ex-fiancé.”
“No forgiveness for your—indiscretion, then.”
“Not likely in this lifetime or the next. He saw what he saw, drew the logical conclusions, and that was an end to it.”
“And you’ve never explained the truth to him?”
“Said explanation is covered by which section of the Official Secrets Act again?”
“I’m sure the Brigadier would bend the rules for you on that.”
“And I’m just as sure that he would then hold it over me for the rest of my life. I don’t care to owe him that favour. Besides, if Mike were really the man for me, he would have accepted the situation, stiffened the old upper lip, forgiven me my obvious wartime lapse, and taken me back. Since he did none of those things, he clearly wasn’t worth any more effort on my part. To hell with the bastard.”
“There’s my girl,” said Andrew admiringly. “Never let sympathy get in the way of getting the job done.”
“That was not one of your better sweet nothings, I must say.”
“It brings me to my next topic.”
“Which is?”
“The Brigadier would like you back.”
“Back? You mean—”
“Back in the field.”
“Which field?”
“Germany, for starters.”
“Doing what?”
“Working under me,” he said. “And don’t make the obvious joke. You’d be ideal. The opposition has never seen you. You’re fluent in all the necessary languages, you’ve already had most of the training, and the best part is we could see much more of each other than we do now.”
“Except the Russkies would know about me inside of one clandestine rendezvous,” Iris pointed out.
“Not if we’re careful.”
“There’s always a careless moment in these matters,” said Iris. “You’d be making more mistakes with me more available to you. I’m surprised the Russkies haven’t stumbled onto this little love nest by now.”
“Yet they haven’t.”
“Andrew, you know why I can’t do this,” said Iris. “The real reason.”
“Oh, bollocks, Sparks. You don’t have to get on a plane to get there. Take the bloody ferry and a few trains. It would be less obvious an entrance, anyway.”
“It’s not the flying, Andrew,” said Iris, looking away. “It’s all of it. Facing where the girls all died without me.”
“That wasn’t your fault, Sparks,” said Andrew. “None of it.”
“But I should have been with them. Maybe I would have spotted that damned traitor. Maybe I could have saved them.”
“Or maybe you would have died along with them. What’s the point of beating yourself up about it now?”
“I’m sorry, Andrew,” said Iris. “It’s just that the trial’s coming up soon. It’s been bringing up much that I’ve been forcing down, and I’m not enjoying it one bit. Tell the Brigadier thanks, but no thanks, all right?”
“Don’t make this your final decision,” Andrew urged her. “You were made for this work.”
“I don’t know what I’m made for,” said Iris. “Now, do me a favour.”
“Anything. What is it?”
“Shut up and make me forget about all of this.”
“Gladly.”
And for a while, she did. But after, when he lay sleeping next to her, she stared up at the darkened ceiling and saw the faces of dead girls.