Enter Pale Death Page 2

  “Terrible great yeller teeth ’e ’as!” Tom breathed in support of his brother.

  “Then ’e put Reuben in ’orspital. Don’t you go near, missis!” Sam finished and fell silent.

  This was the longest speech he’d ever made in his life, and he was horrified by his own boldness. The lady was well known in the county for her horsemanship. She was a fearless rider to hounds. No horse under her was ever known to refuse a fence, and all returned from the field in a lather of exhaustion. Just like her poor old husband, they joked in the village pub when they’d had one too many of Martha’s ales. Sam had gone too far, and now she’d probably sack him and his little brother for impertinence. Would her anger extend to their father? The old fellow held a tied cottage on the estate. It went with his job on the land, and if he lost it, they’d all starve. They remembered what had happened to old Walter’s widow and her kids when she’d crossed her ladyship. The old bat had waited until the Master was away, then thrown the family out without notice.

  But the lady didn’t seem to have retribution on her mind this morning. She was glowing with confidence, putting on a show, you might say, and the boys were her puzzled audience.

  “Enough of that defeatist talk, you two! Jonas and Reuben clearly didn’t come properly prepared. Now, get behind me if you’re nervous. All you have to do is stand ready to put his harness on when I’ve finished speaking to him. What’s his name?”

  “We call ’im Lucy, missis.”

  “Lucy? I understood the new horse to be a stallion?”

  “ ’Es that all right. Got all ’is bits and pieces. It’s short for … Lucifer.” He muttered the name under his breath. “But ’e don’t answer to it, ’cos we don’t say it out loud—it’d be like calling up … you-know-who, missis. We dussn’t go near. We ’as to lower ’is fodder and drink through the roof. Until the vet come with ’is gret big gun. Due tommorrer, Mr. Hartest is.”

  “Well, Mr. Hartest and his great gun will find their services are no longer required. I want you to watch carefully what I’m about to do. In a few minutes we will have the head halter on him and he’ll be stepping out following me like a poodle on a lead. I intend to take him for a little promenade right up to the front door of the Hall to parade him for my husband and his guests. Such ones as are gathered at the breakfast table.” Lavinia peered at her wristwatch. “Good. We’re slightly ahead of ourselves. That will give me and Lucifer time to get acquainted. The gentlemen will soon be coming down to breakfast—there’s to be a shoot later on this morning.” She gave a laugh tinkling with good humour. “You boys will be the first to witness a Lady charming the Devil. You have my permission to pass the story round the village. In fact, I insist that you do—none of your usual Suffolky bashfulness! Ready? Then draw back the bolts, stand clear and prepare to be amazed.”

  The boys shot the bolts and hurried to obey the second command. They watched from behind the corn hutch as their mistress patted her left pocket, then fumbled about and extracted something from her right. Holding out what they took to be an offering for the horse, she moved confidently forward, cooing, “Come on, Lucifer, my beauty! See what a treat I have for you … Oh, don’t be shy … I won’t hurt you … Here, take it …”

  The expected furious charge forward with pounding hooves and snapping teeth did not occur. For once, the horse hung back in his stall. Snorting and clattering, he appeared, if anything, to be moving backwards to avoid the cooing advance.

  The boys flinched on hearing a shriek of protest as piercing as the unearthly screams you heard on butchering days round the back of the knacker’s yard at the end of the village. But their mistress paid no heed to the stallion’s distress and took another step forward, thrusting her hand towards his flaring nostrils. From the depths of the stall came the flash of eyes rolling in fear, a neck arched aggressively, ears flattened to the skull, the huge head stretched out parallel to the ground. The whole fury of the one-ton, seventeen-hand body seemed to be channelled through the bared and vicious teeth from which foam dripped in gobbets.

  Tom began to sob. Sam put a protective arm round his brother’s thin shoulders and called out a last desperate warning.

  A further harrowing scream followed, human this time, and the scream ended abruptly in a gurgle. The stallion appeared at the door of his stall, wild-eyed, the body of his mistress clamped by the neck between yellow teeth that opened a source for the runnels of blood and froth coursing down the folds of her cape. He shook her once, twice, as a terrier shakes the life out of a rat at the harvest hunt, and dropped her onto the wet cobbles. For good measure, two massive, iron-shod feet reared up and smashed down on the already lifeless form.

  CHAPTER 1

  LONDON. JUNE 1933.

  The card arrived at the breakfast table sealed in an unassuming brown business envelope delivered with the morning post. Catching sight of her name on it in handwriting she recognised as she sorted through the pile, Lily fished it out and put it with the rest of her mail. This consisted largely of unwanted advertising material coyly addressed to “The Lady of the House.” While her husband grunted and exclaimed over his own morning’s haul, Lily read her message, eyes widening briefly in excitement. She passed a hand delicately over her mouth to smother a deceiving yawn.

  “Everything all right, Lily? You’re letting your egg congeal.”

  “Not quite awake yet, darling.” She slipped the card back into its envelope and shuffled it in with the rest. She shrugged one shoulder. Nonchalant. Bored. “Here’s another invitation to buy one of those floor-cleaning machines from Harrods. Nothing personal—they seem to be targeting the housewives of Hampstead,” she murmured, passing over a flyer singing the praises of Mr. Hoover’s latest invention. “It beats as it sweeps as it cleans, apparently.”

  Her husband sighed, took it dutifully and favoured it with a cursory look. He gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Have you really read this, Lil? Look—it claims to work according to a new cleaning principle: positive agitation. It beats out the dirt and extracts the whole unpleasant mess, leaving behind a fresh home you can be proud of. I’m all for a little positive agitation! I shall adopt it as my motto.” He returned, still chuckling, to his own correspondence.

  “We could do with a new cleaner, but they are expensive. I’ll see what Emma thinks. She’s getting a bit cronky—had you noticed?—and could do with a bit of extra help.” Lily peered across the table at her husband’s copy of the Times, lying open at the sports page, and read the headlines upside-down with no difficulty. “Gracious! Can Middlesex possibly have lost to Yorkshire? Again?”

  She listened with half an ear to the genial huffing and puffing and the sporting explanations that followed her attempt to distract, preoccupied by the words she’d just read. In black ink, chiselled characters on a white card:

  My office. 9:00 Tuesday. I have a problem I’d like you to help me with. S.

  Waylaid by memories, Lily fought back a smile and lowered her eyes to her plate in case they were shining with more emotion than could reasonably be accounted for by a congealed egg.

  Her husband rumbled on companionably, reminding her quite unnecessarily of his imminent business trip, as he called his secretive forays into Europe. “Packing coming along is it?… Good … I say—it’s beginning to look more like ten days now with this excursion into the Black Forest. Ugh! Pop two extra ties in, will you, love? Oh, and shove in a pair of long-johns—we’re promised a flight in an aeroplane. Nasty, draughty things, aeroplanes.”

  “Yes, dear. Will six pairs of underpants do? There’s bound to be an in-house laundry service. Browning or Beretta? I wasn’t sure, so I’ve left that for you to decide.”

  “Oh, Browning I think. I’m hardly likely to use it, so I may as well impress them with the bulk. German military tailoring hardly minimises the size of the opposition’s bulges; in fact, I think that’s the point of it. They’ll be eyeing up my Browning while I’m admiring their Lugers. Both useless for close-up work. On second th
ought, I’ll pop the Beretta in there as well. Don’t bother with hats, darling. I’m planning to buy something suitable when I get to Berlin. Bit of local cover called for—don’t want to be taken for an Englishman on holiday. Would you find me fetching in a green felt Tyrolean with a feather in the side? What do you say, Lil? Lil? Are you listening?”

  She gave him the cheerful mechanical reassurances he expected.

  “Well, I have to dash now … Look, my dearest Lily …” He came round the table and took her hands in his, suddenly earnest. He gave her the devastating smile that had knocked her for six so many years before. “Just go and get one of those machines … those vacuum thingamies … you know what I mean … I see the very idea of one brings a flush of excited anticipation to your damask cheek.” He winked and caressed the damask cheek. “Now I wonder how Harrods could possibly know I’ve just had a pay rise?”

  He’d guessed. Of course he had. That was one of the penalties you paid for being married to the smartest man in the kingdom. She handed him his briefcase, put her arms round his neck and kissed him. He bit her ear.

  LILY WENTWORTH (AS was) entered the reception hall of Scotland Yard at ten minutes to nine on Tuesday morning and announced herself. She acknowledged with annoyance that her knees were trembling and she was breathing fast. The formidable building still had the power to intimidate, however often she ventured into it. Everyone else was walking purposefully up and down the tiled corridors wearing a police uniform or a business suit with bowler hat and briefcase. In her lady-heading-for-Liberty’s outfit, she felt herself doubly an outsider. Staff changed swiftly at the Yard, and no one called out a friendly “Wotcher, Lil!” How long had it been? She calculated that it was eleven years since she’d received the first of his summonses. Each one had changed her life. Some had left scars, on flesh and spirit.

  The young copper assigned escort duty took her up to the top floor in the lift. Sharing the confined space with a stranger was always awkward and, after an exchange of pleasantries, they fell silent. Out of the corner of her eye, Lily watched him doing exactly what she expected a young officer would be doing with a new subject in a lift. He was filling in his mental portrait form. Page 22 of the trainee copper’s handbook. She followed his glance as he made his top-to-toe clandestine observations:

  Subject: Female.

  Nationality: English.

  Married status: Unknown (gloves worn).

  Height: 5’ 6”.

  Build: Slim.

  Age (conjectural)… mmm … thirtyish. (She flattered herself.)

  Hair: Fair, short and waved. (What he could see of it.)

  Eyes: Green.

  Distinguishing features: Surgical scar to right jaw, not totally disguised by a layer of Leichner’s shade number 2: ‘Porcelain.’

  Purpose of visit: By invitation, to attend Assistant Commissioner Sandilands.

  Lily sensed that his exercise became trickier when it came to evaluating her outfit. He noted her smart cream linen two-piece and matching cloche hat, she thought, with quiet approval. The gloves and shoes were impeccable, but his eyes snagged on the one jarring note in her appearance—a leather satchel she carried slung from her shoulder. Unlike the neat purse just about able to contain a penny coin for the loo and a cologne-scented handkerchief that London ladies clutched to their bosoms, this capacious and battered object was decidedly utilitarian. Lily sighed. Time perhaps to exchange her old friend for something classier from Vuitton? The copper frowned in puzzlement and, sensing his unease, Lily reassured him in her best Mayfair voice that her bag had been checked at the reception desk.

  It hadn’t.

  The desk officer had given it a cursory look and waved her straight through without bothering to search it. Lily didn’t want to risk a sudden panicking lunge from her dutiful escort in the confined space of the lift and she gave him a broad, disarming smile. He was right to be watchful. She knew she didn’t look like a Sinn Féin gangster’s moll, but there was a chance she could have been one of those demented society women the Mosleyite Fascisti cultivated and cajoled into doing their bidding. It wouldn’t have been the first time an apparent innocent had walked into Scotland Yard with a hidden explosive.

  As the lift lurched to a halt and he opened the doors with a flourish, she eased under the young man’s outstretched arm murmuring a word of thanks and added, “Suit is from Monsieur Worth and perfume from Mademoiselle Chanel, Officer.”

  This was greeted by a shout of laughter. “And smile from Heaven, miss!” he told her gallantly. “The assistant commissioner’s a lucky chap! Don’t know how he does it!”

  “THERE’S A BOMB in there!

  “Bam! Splat! Bam! You’re strawberry jam!” Lily announced in playground Cockney, slamming her bag down under the Assistant Commissioner’s nose.

  “Always ready with the warm greeting, Lily! But no need for concern. I told the desk inspector to pass you straight up, unmolested.”

  “Then you’re losing your marbles … getting slack. Your modern anarchist doesn’t go about with a smoking bomb under his cloak, twitching and frothing and muttering Ruritanian curses. It’s quite likely to be some posh lady with a bee in her silk bonnet and a hand grenade in her crocodile-skin purse. How do you know I haven’t started an affair with the dashing Oswald, King of the Blackshirts, since we last met? He’s cutting a swathe through Kensington, I understand. Breaking more hearts than limbs. Oh … sorry! Hello! So pleased to see you again, Joe! How are you doing, old thing?”

  “Apart from the onset of senile decrepitude you’ve just identified, I’m fit and well and very happy to see you. Shall we sit down and I’ll introduce you to my problem?… Ah! Here comes our coffee! Thank you, Constable Smithson. You set a lovely tray! On the side table, if you please. Now, buzz off, lad—we’ll wait on ourselves. Here you are, Lily … Blue Mountain in Worcester china … nothing but the best for my favourite flatfoot. Oh, and a gypsy cream or two to nibble on … So there you are. It comes with a warning, Lily,” he said after a brief outline. “What I’m putting before you is covert and unauthorised. I don’t think it could be dangerous …”

  “When did you ever offer me an ice cream in the park? Do I need a gun or will a hatpin do the job?” Woman Police Constable Lily Wentworth, as she had been a decade earlier, spoke with sunny disregard to her old boss. “I sharpened my claws before I came. Though I’m surprised there’s anything I can still do for you in your new elevated status, Commissioner.” She looked around with exaggerated appreciation at the large top floor room with its windows open to the river and the Victoria Embankment below. The impressive desk across whose polished surface they were exchanging delighted grins carried only a severely stylish pewter pen tray and inkpot. Scottish by the look of it and Joe’s own choice, she guessed. The absence of files, notes and memos at this hour told of a team of secretaries and a pool of typists at work early somewhere about the building. The empty wastepaper basket and freshly polished floor were further indication of others unseen ministering to the needs of the top police brass.

  He was looking the part, she thought, in his well-tailored suit and quiet tie. Far too young for the job, but then he always had been ahead of his time. She remembered that, at her first interview with him, the freshly appointed Commander Sandilands, dishevelled and disorganised, had greeted her with papers spilling off his desk and a face haggard with exhaustion and despair. Alarmingly, his hands and clothes had been damp and still stained with the fresh blood of four gunshot victims. His reputation, his handsome looks and his battle scars had combined to render her practically speechless in his presence. Now, the sleek surroundings and the equally sleek appearance were reassuring. Surely, at last, she could let go and ignore the urge she had always felt to rally round and protect him.

  “I’m listening. Tell me what you’re really up to, Joe.” He’d never liked to waste time, and his pace was her pace. They worked well in harness.

  “Getting to the bottom of a mysterious death in high places. So
high, people dare not even gossip about it. Nothing ever reached my desk until last week and, unless I’ve been remarkably slow on the uptake, I don’t believe I’ve ever been passed a hint over a whisky in some concerned gent’s club, which is the way these things often start.”

  “Has it been reported in the press?”

  “No. Apart, that is, from an unremarkable mention in the obituary column of the Times.” Joe fell silent, sunk in thought. “She merited four lines, Lily. Just four lines. The problem, you might say, has been buried six feet under and left to rot away. Unnoticed. Unmourned. To all appearances.”

  “No police involvement, you say?” Lily asked, eager to hear more. She’d learned to pay attention and give weight to Joe’s suspicions over the years.

  “Initially, yes, there was. A token enquiry. The county police force involved—efficient fellows, I’m told—have pronounced themselves satisfied there’s been no dirty work at the crossroads. ‘Death by misadventure,’ the coroner announced. I can’t imagine why I’m letting myself be drawn into all this. The nearest anyone comes to suggesting that all may not be well is an occasional hissing intake of breath, a quiet shaking of the head and—of all ploys!—an attempt to squeeze a comment from me! I who know less than anyone! What really cuts me to the quick is—I fear people actually suspect me of involvement in the cover-up. I won’t have that, Lily.”

  “Gawd! It’s the Prince! He’s in trouble again? I thought he was safely off in Africa shooting things.”

  “If only it were so simple! That would be much more easily settled. His every move is recorded, preventive measures in place. At home or away, he’s only a danger to the beasts. This enquiry, if my worst fears are well-founded, could involve stepping into unknown territory strewn with man-traps and mines.”