The Riddle at Gipsy's Mile Read online

  ‘Could have been any of those, sir,’ said Willis. ‘If anybody saw her I’m sure the Kent chaps will find them sooner or later.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Jameson. ‘Very well, then, let’s see what we’ve got.’

  Willis opened the case and they peered inside.

  ‘Pretty much as you’d expect,’ remarked Willis. ‘Just clothes.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jameson. He lifted something out. It was a pale pink evening-frock of cheap satin, a little stained and crumpled, and smelling of cigarette smoke. ‘Evening things,’ he said. ‘Recently worn, too, I should say.’

  He put it to one side and brought out the other things one by one. Two more evening-dresses and a pair of satin gloves. A slightly moth-eaten fur stole. One or two plain skirts and jerseys. One pair of satin evening-shoes, but no day-shoes. Underthings. A number of items of cheap jewellery. Cosmetics.

  ‘Do you notice anything, Willis?’ said Jameson.

  ‘She seems to have had rather a lot of evening clothes,’ said Willis.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Jameson. He regarded the sorry collection of things that had once been owned and perhaps prized by the dead woman, and wondered, not for the first time, what she would have thought had she known that a stranger was rifling through her belongings. In his years as a detective, he had learned that it was unwise to allow himself to be too deeply affected by the fates of those who had met an unfortunate end, but he had never quite managed to shake off that twinge of sadness he always felt when first confronted with their possessions—the only thing that remained of them, and a permanent reminder that they had once been people too, with loves and hates, desires, faults and virtues. He welcomed the feeling, for it reassured him that, in spite of all the unpleasant things he had seen, he was still human.

  ‘Where was she from, do you think?’ he said to the sergeant. ‘Somewhere outside London, in which case was she just passing through on her way to Kent? Or was she a Londoner? Either way, I wonder why she left the suitcase. She can’t have been leaving for good, since she would have had to come back for it.’

  ‘Perhaps she was going away for a few days with the mystery man,’ said Willis, thinking. ‘No, that’s no good, is it? If she was she’d have taken her suitcase with her. Presumably she didn’t plan to be away long, then. It’s a pity nobody saw her, or whom she was with.’

  ‘It’s possible, of course, that she wasn’t with anyone when she got on the train,’ said the inspector. ‘It may be that she had arranged to meet someone when she got down there.’

  ‘That’s always assuming she was killed by someone she knew,’ said the sergeant. ‘We still can’t be certain that she wasn’t attacked and thrown in that ditch by a passing madman.’

  ‘Oh, I think we can,’ said Jameson, ‘if what the police surgeon in Littlechurch says is correct.’

  ‘Ah yes, I’d forgotten about that.’

  ‘They are sending the body up here tomorrow. Let’s see what our lot make of it.’

  Willis picked up a satin dress and examined it.

  ‘Why so many evening clothes?’ he said.

  ‘I rather think they are her work clothes,’ said Jameson. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised to find out that she worked as a dance hostess or something of that kind.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ agreed Willis. ‘Is there anything else in the suitcase?’

  ‘No,’ said Jameson. ‘Ah, just a second, though—there’s a little pocket here.’

  He felt inside it and brought out a piece of paper, which had been folded over several times. He unfolded it and glanced at it, then whistled.

  Willis craned his neck to see what it was.

  ‘It’s a handbill of some sort,’ he said. ‘What does it say?’

  Jameson handed him the paper. Printed on it in large characters were the words:

  COME FOR THE MUSIC

  COME FOR THE DANCING

  COME EARLY AND STAY LATE!

  ALVIE BERTEAU AND HIS JAZZ ORCHESTRA

  THEY’RE THE CAT’S PYJAMAS!

  ‘What’s this symbol here?’ said Willis, peering at something in puzzlement. ‘It looks like the sun, but what’s that meant to be? The moon?’

  ‘The earth, I think,’ said Jameson. ‘Don’t you recognize it? It’s a handbill for the Copernicus Club.’ Willis looked momentarily blank, and he went on, ‘You remember the Copernicus, don’t you? It’s just off Brewer Street. Mrs. Chang’s place.’

  ‘Oh, that place,’ said Willis. ‘Didn’t it get shut down?’

  ‘Yes, briefly. It’s been closed a few times, as a matter of fact. Every so often we raid it, and Mrs. Chang gets brought up before the magistrate and fined. Then we all shake hands and off she goes and opens up again. It’s become rather a game, I think.’

  ‘Waste of time, if you ask me,’ said Willis in disgust. ‘We could be out catching real criminals.’ His expression made it quite clear what he thought of the current licensing laws.

  ‘This handbill does give some credence to our theory about the woman’s job, though,’ said Jameson.

  ‘A dance hostess,’ said Willis. ‘If that’s all there was to it, of course.’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? There’s been some suspicion that more goes on at the Copernicus than just unlicensed drinking, but we’ve never been able to prove it. And if our dead woman was engaging in—er—less salubrious activities, shall we say, then we may have the devil of a job to find out who her man friend was. It looks as though the next step will be to go and pay a visit to Brewer Street and speak to Mrs. Chang. Perhaps she’ll be willing to give us some information in return for a good word from us the next time she is raided.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ said Willis. He had been poking about inside the suitcase pocket. ‘Look!’ he said, and brought out something else. ‘You missed this. It was stuck right down in the corner.’

  Jameson took it, and saw that it was a small photograph of an infant of perhaps two or three years old.

  ‘I wonder if this child is hers,’ he said.

  ‘Very sad if it is, sir,’ said Sergeant Willis. ‘I don’t like to think of a child without its mother.’

  ‘It’s rather an unusual face,’ observed Jameson, gazing at the picture. ‘I might almost say a foreign face. There’s a Latin quality to it—Italian, or Spanish, perhaps. If this child is the woman’s, I wonder whether he resembles his mother. Perhaps she was foreign.’

  ‘She might have been,’ said Willis, ‘but she’d been here long enough if so, to judge by her clothes. Nothing foreign about them.’

  ‘No, you’re right,’ said Jameson. ‘Her clothes are recognizably English. I shall put the men onto tracing them, if possible, although I don’t suppose they’ll have much luck. This is all the sort of stuff one can find in any cheap dress-shop in England.’

  ‘True enough,’ said Willis.

  ‘And have a look at the missing persons reports. We may find our woman on there. If not, we shall have to advertise in the newspapers. Someone must surely be missing a young, blonde woman in a blue coat. Young women tend to have friends. Somebody must know who she is.’

  ‘It’s a queer story,’ said the sergeant. ‘At first glance I’d’ve said it was straightforward—chap rows with his girl then bangs her on the head and dumps her in a panic. We get three or four cases like that every year. But this is something different.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Jameson. ‘We’ll know more in the next few days, of course, once our medical man has made his report, but there’s no reason to suppose the Littlechurch surgeon has made a mistake.’

  ‘Arsenic, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s what he seems to think.’

  Willis shook his head.

  ‘That’s premeditation, that is. Strangling, now, or a blow to the head: either of those might have happened on the spur of the moment. But arsenic is a different matter.’

  ‘It certainly is,’ said the inspector. ‘And if somebody did poison her it makes things that much more compli
cated.’

  NINE

  The sun was sinking low when the Gipsy’s Mile party returned home. This time Mrs. Marchmont travelled with Herbert Pilkington-Soames, since Cynthia wanted to go with Freddy—in order to pump him about what he and Angela had been talking about, Angela suspected.

  Herbert was a stout, hearty man of forty-five whose lack of hair on his shining pate was more than made up for by a luxuriant moustache. He both admired and was terrified of his wife, despite his size, and freely admitted that he did whatever she told him to.

  ‘The woman’s a menace,’ he said as they drove. ‘Since she took up cards she’s been running through money as though it were water. I don’t mind telling you that it’s been a close thing once or twice, and I have had to put my foot down. “Cynthia,” I said, “if you really must gamble then why on earth can’t you do it with sixpences instead of guineas? No,” I said, “this must stop.” To her credit, she had the wit to see that we were plunging towards disaster, and so she promised to find a way of bringing some money in. That’s how she ended up doing this scribbling business at the Clarion. Of course, it’s all a heap of nonsense—Bickerstaffe only took her on because she swore to him that she had the telephone-number of every aristocrat who had ever been caught with someone they shouldn’t be, and could get the low-down on all the latest scandals. I think he’s regretting it now, though—why, the woman can barely spell her own name, for heaven’s sake!’

  He paused to navigate around a difficult bend. Angela, who was enjoying his indiscretions immensely, given the badgering she had had to put up with from Cynthia, said:

  ‘Does it pay well, then?’

  ‘It depends on what she produces,’ he replied. ‘She might get anything from fourpence a word to ninepence, depending on the story. I rather think you’re ninepence, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I feared as much,’ said Angela. ‘It’s a pity—if I were cheaper, I might be able to get out of it. In spite of appearances, I am not exactly keen on having my name in the newspapers.’

  ‘I can believe it,’ Herbert assured her. ‘You’re not the type to seek attention—why, anyone can see that. But that won’t stop Cynthia. If I were you, I should probably tell her a pack of lies. I do that all the time. It makes life so much easier.’

  Angela laughed at his shameless confession.

  ‘It had crossed my mind,’ she admitted.

  ‘I sometimes think things would be easier if we left London,’ he went on, returning to his original train of thought. ‘Town is so expensive, and of course all her friends are there—that awful Nancy Beasley in particular. Do you know her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ghastly old harpy,’ he said. ‘She’d sell her grandmother to pay for one more night at the tables. Cynthia has never been the same since she fell into her company. If we lived down here, now, things would be so much quieter and there’d be fewer temptations.’

  ‘And you’d be able to see Miles and Marguerite much more often. And Gil.’

  ‘Yes, I should like that very much. I rather miss my pals,’ he said.

  Angela was curious.

  ‘Isn’t Gil much younger than you and Miles? Doesn’t it ever seem like rather an odd friendship?’

  Herbert nodded.

  ‘Yes, it’s true—I am the oldest of the three. I already had a wife and son when I was called up, while Miles wasn’t married and Gil was practically a boy. But war does funny things to people—it can drive them apart or it can bring them together, and in our case it did the latter. I owe my life to Gil, and Miles was a good friend too. He bucked me up once or twice when I was in a funk—I don’t mind telling you that we were all terribly afraid at times. But it wasn’t all hard work. We had fun together too.’

  Angela smiled sympathetically at Herbert’s sincerity. Despite his slightly crass exterior she found him rather likeable.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ she said. ‘Your famous weekends in Paris.’

  Herbert shifted uncomfortably, but underneath his moustache his mouth twitched in a smile.

  ‘I should like to be young again,’ he said. ‘Youth lasts such a short time, and one is far too busy doing things to enjoy them—if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I think I do,’ said Angela, ‘But sometimes I think the memory of a thing is better than the thing itself: we forget the worst bits and hold on to the good bits.’

  ‘I wish I could forget the worst bits,’ said Herbert gruffly. ‘Here we are,’ he said in a more cheerful tone as they arrived back at Gipsy’s Mile. ‘Poor Gil. I’ll bet he wishes he could have left those two women fighting over him in that draughty mausoleum of his, and come back with us. I wouldn’t change places with him for all the world, in spite of his money.’

  Angela was inclined to agree. The simple, eager Gilbert Blakeney had looked somewhat incongruous set against the grand surroundings of the house that was his birthright and his destiny. Even Lucy, who had no business there yet, had looked far more at home in the place.

  Miles’s car was standing in front of the house; presumably the Harrisons had already arrived back home. Angela wanted something from her room, so went upstairs to fetch it. As she returned downstairs she thought she saw a flash of orange and gold disappearing round a corner. In the hall she found William waiting respectfully for her, slightly pink in the face.

  ‘What is it?’ she said.

  ‘Mr. Turner sent a message to say that the Bentley has been fixed, ma’am. They’re going to bring it over tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, good!’ said Angela. ‘That’s a relief, at any rate. We shan’t have to buy a new one after all.’

  ‘No, ma’am,’ agreed William, although he looked slightly wistful. Angela laughed.

  ‘Come now, we don’t want to waste money unnecessarily, do we?’ she said. ‘Don’t be so downcast! Perhaps we shall have a new one next year instead. Wasn’t it a Rolls-Royce you had your eye on the other week?’

  ‘Why yes, it was, as a matter of fact,’ said William, cheering up.

  ‘Well, we shall see,’ said Angela, and was about to move away when a thought struck her and she turned back to him. ‘William,’ she said, then stopped.

  ‘Yes, ma’am?’

  She moved a little closer in order to speak more quietly.

  ‘Is everything quite all right?’ she said. There was nothing in the words themselves, but her expression gave them meaning. William went pink again.

  ‘Why, yes, thank you, ma’am,’ he said.

  Angela looked across to where she had seen the flash of orange.

  ‘I think you know what I am referring to,’ she said kindly. ‘Naturally, I shouldn’t dream of interfering in your personal affairs, but you will let me know if there is anything you’d like me to help with, won’t you? I won’t stand by if anybody is—bothering you in any way.’

  William had quite recovered his self-possession.

  ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I understand. Nobody is—bothering me.’

  Angela glanced at him sideways. They exchanged a knowing look. She smiled and went off. Well, she had done her best. What William got up to now was his own affair.

  She went and joined the party in the sitting-room. The atmosphere was a little frosty and the men were all looking wary and uncomfortable, so she deduced that Marguerite and Cynthia had had one of their regular little blow-ups. These never amounted to more than a pointed remark or two, and the two ladies were invariably the best of friends again immediately afterwards.

  ‘Darling, there you are!’ said Marguerite. ‘What did you think of Lady Alice?’

  ‘She seemed pleasant enough,’ replied Angela, ‘although I see what you mean about her and Lucy. They do seem to clash, rather, don’t they?’

  ‘Oh, you simply can’t imagine!’ said Marguerite.

  ‘Are you quite certain that Lady Alice encouraged the engagement?’ asked Angela. ‘I can’t see it myself.’

  ‘Oh yes, there’s no doubt about it at all,’ said Marguerite. ‘All three of them
swear it.’

  Angela said nothing but thought that Lady Alice must be a remarkable character if she could encourage her son to marry a woman whom she herself strongly disliked, purely for the sake of carrying on the family name and assuring the future of their landed estate.

  ‘Now, Angela,’ said Cynthia, and Angela saw to her dismay that she had taken a dainty little notebook and pencil from her bag. ‘We’ve just time to do this before dinner. Shall we go into the parlour?’

  There was no escaping it now. Angela rose and followed Cynthia out of the sitting-room. She pulled a mock-terrified face at Herbert as she passed. Freddy was regarding her with a malicious grin and she narrowed her eyes.

  ‘Here we are!’ said Cynthia. ‘Don’t worry, this ought to be quite painless,’ she said with a trilling laugh. ‘Now, then, I’ve been watching you all weekend and taking notes—just for background detail, you know—’ (Angela widened her eyes in alarm) ‘—but now I really want to talk to you—you know, to find out all the personal details that make you the celebrity you are. Your innermost thoughts and secrets. I still don’t feel I’ve quite got to the bottom of the question: who is the real Angela Marchmont? Our readers are dying to know. Tell me, Angela, what is your motivation—your impetus? What really stimulates you?

  Angela bit back the urge to reply, ‘A martini would do the trick nicely just now,’ and made some vague and embarrassed response. She looked at the clock, but there was still half an hour until dinner and Cynthia was now asking questions about Angela’s married life which Angela had very much rather not answer. She sighed inwardly and began to make use of some of the lies she had invented earlier. It would be too much to see the truth splashed across the popular pages.

  After fifteen minutes or so she was rescued by Freddy, who had taken pity on her and brought in drinks.

  ‘Thank you, Freddy, darling,’ murmured Cynthia, who was scribbling away in her notebook. ‘We shall just be a few more minutes.’