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  ‘Well, a face to face snarling match ensued! I told him I was a policewoman and a friend of the dead woman. I knew him to be a thief and I’d call the police and tell them I’d found him standing over the body in the act of stealing her emeralds when I’d come up to her room. I’d tell them he’d thrown the poker out of the window and there’d be bound to be a fingerprint on it to clinch my story.’

  Joe’s face was a stony mask of disgust.

  ‘So, thief and murderer, you stood quarrelling over the body and plotted your way out of it.’

  ‘Yes. He’s very clever, you know, your sergeant. It was his idea that I should get out of my black dress and gloves, tidy up in the bathroom and slip into the Dame’s reserve evening dress. He put my bloodstained things away in his pocket – a trade-off for the poker. I had something on him and he had something on me. Then we planned what we would say and do.’

  ‘You laid a trail of utter confusion and misdirection for the wretched investigating officer they sent to clear up the mess.’

  ‘We were unlucky it was you they sent. Father made a few calls and got it all diverted. I was allowed to stay on the case, close to you, to see what you were up to. Make sure you didn’t arrest any unfortunate innocent party. Keep you spinning in circles. Pity you didn’t obey orders. You exasperated some important people.’

  ‘But you were lucky with your timing, Tilly – you and Armitage. With the strike looming, the merest whisper of the Dame’s treachery would have been disastrous for the government. They could foresee the propaganda value to the opposition. Can you imagine what the socialists, to say nothing of the communists, could have made of such a scandal? A country that can be betrayed to a past and possibly future enemy by one of its ruling classes – its military aristocracy if you like – a woman honoured as a Dame of the British Empire, is a country that needs a radical overhaul. First Sir Roger and now Dame Beatrice. It seems our lords and masters aren’t fit to rule over us, as we’ve long suspected. Time, surely, to sharpen the guillotine? Time for our own People’s Revolution? First France, then Russia . . . now it’s our turn. No wonder the rug was pulled out from under my feet.’

  ‘The country’s much better off without her, Joe.’ She reached across and touched his hand. Joe tried not to flinch.

  ‘Will you be able to cut that albatross loose now?’

  ‘Two. There was Audrey as well,’ he sullenly reminded her.

  ‘What will you do now?’

  ‘Carry on as though nothing happened, I suppose. A wiser man. A less trusting man. What will you do, Tilly?’ he asked carefully, knowing she would not betray her last secret. And, after all, it was none of his business what she did with the rest of her life. He would forget her bright, deceitful face in time. He thought it might take his sergeant a little longer, his sergeant who had so carefully kept her dress, not, as he had at first supposed, as insurance against treachery, but as something much more intimate. Poor old Armitage! He could almost feel sorry for him.

  ‘It’s all been a bit of a strain, this last bit, Joe. Perhaps police work isn’t for me, after all. I’m resigning my post. I’m going to spend some time away from London.’

  ‘Going anywhere interesting?’ he asked conversationally.

  ‘Oh, yes. You’d be very surprised to hear!’

  Inspector Cottingham wobbled into Queen Adelaide Court later that week on his bicycle. The streets were littered with burned-out buses and the carcases of strike-breaking vehicles of one sort or another and two wheels were the most reliable way of getting about the seething capital.

  He knocked on the closed door of ‘Violet Villa’. He’d come on an errand of mercy. If, as Joe and he supposed, Armitage was fleeing the country, even now checking into his first class cabin, the old man was going to be feeling somewhat let down. Cottingham was going to offer to escort him to his appointment up west in Harley Street, if indeed such an appointment existed. The twenty-fourth of May, he’d mentioned. The very least they could do was check that suitable arrangements had been made, Sandilands had said.

  He banged again and called, ‘Mr Armitage!’

  ‘Yer won’t get no answer terday,’ said the pram-pushing escort who’d crowded round him the moment he entered the court.

  ‘No? Why not?’

  ‘’Aven’t you ’eard? ’E’s gorn orf. Both of ’em. They’ve gorn west. All the way to America!’

  ‘West? Ah, yes,’ mumbled Cottingham. ‘Seems a long way to go for an eye operation but I suppose they have good surgeons in New York. Devious old devil! Like son, like father, I suppose!’

  ‘Wot you on about, mister? ’Ere – you’re the one as fancies cats, int yer?’

  She delved into the mass of cushions and blankets in her box pram and produced a cat. The cat. ‘Left ’im behind. Auntie Bella can’t stand cats. Don’t suppose you’d take ’im off our ’ands? Let yer ’ave ’im for a bob!’

  Cottingham sighed. ‘Well, I suppose we ginger-nuts must stick together . . .’

  Rehearsing a speech for his wife, Cottingham tucked the cat into the basket of his bicycle and pedalled back up west.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  ‘Lydia’s asked me to bring you a tea tray, Joe,’ said Dorcas, waking him from a blessed snooze in the sunshine on the lawn. ‘You’ve got Assam and scones and jam. We’re finishing up last year’s strawberry so you can have lots. And I made the Madeira cake. Oh, let me pour, you’re still half asleep! Can it have been that exhausting, working at the Palace for two weeks? She’s sent out the Tatler as well.’

  ‘Thanks, but I don’t read scandal magazines,’ said Joe.

  ‘That’s very narrow-minded of a man in your questionable employment,’ said Dorcas sententiously, using phrases he thought he’d heard his sister use more than once. ‘You need to know what all these villains are getting up to . . . who’s divorcing whom, who’s lost all his money gambling and what that Duchess gets up to on the Riviera. I’ll read it and tell you the interesting bits.’

  Dorcas fell silent, all her attention on the much-treasured and pored-over society magazine. For a child who never went out in society, Joe had noticed that she knew a very great deal about the way it worked. He was still feeling guilty about his impetuous burdening of Lydia and her family with the refugees from King’s Hanger. But at least now, most of the troops had returned to barracks. Orlando had arrived, to beg them to come back. Had even apologized to Joe for wasting police time with his stories. ‘Couldn’t resist, old man!’ he’d had the effrontery to remark happily. ‘Can’t stand coppers. None of us can see the point of them. Thought I’d make life easier for myself and save you the fag of going around checking up on me. If you’d just taken my word for it you’d have saved yourself hours of work.’ Joe embarked on a defence and explanation of police procedure and gave up after three halting sentences, seeing Orlando’s eyes glaze over.

  Dorcas had stayed behind to ‘go into training’ as Lydia put it. ‘Give me that girl for two years and I’ll have her curtsying to the Queen, just you watch!’

  Joe wasn’t so sure. Still, he approved of the newly clean face and combed hair, the freshly ironed, red-striped dress.

  ‘Oh, you’ll want to see this, Joe!’ Dorcas crowed. ‘Friends of yours on page twenty. Isn’t that the lady policeman you brought down to King’s Hanger?’ She thrust the magazine in front of him and pointed. ‘It’s on the “Forthcoming Marriages” page. Look!’

  Unwillingly, Joe looked. And looked again. He snatched the magazine from Dorcas and peered at it closely. Tilly’s shining face beamed exultantly out at him as she stood posing in a photograph that might have been taken by Dorothy Wilding, so smooth and professional was it. Her groom-to-be stood by her side, with slightly the air of a buffalo surprised at a water-hole, Joe thought unkindly.

  ‘Great heavens!’ was the only expletive he could allow himself in the presence of a child and he felt it didn’t go far towards expressing his astonishment.

  Excitedly, Dorcas took possessio
n again. ‘Bloody hell!’ she said. ‘Who on earth writes this nonsense? Just listen to this!’ She read out: ‘“In the turbulent wake of broken engagements, disaster and family loss on both sides, the happy couple announce they are putting the years of unhappiness behind them and, after a whirlwind romance, are to be married in the autumn. They will start their new life together in the groom’s ancestral estates in Norfolk. On the death of his grandfather the Earl of Brancaster last week, Sir Montagu Mathurin inherited the title and much else. The ring . . .” Look, Joe, you can just make it out. “. . . is a rose diamond set in platinum and was bought for the bride-to-be at Asprey’s.” Asprey’s! Huh! They’ll need the “much else” if the bride has such expensive tastes. Will you be sending them a wedding present, Joe?’

  ‘I don’t think they’ll be expecting one from me. But why not? Yes! I’ll send them a barrel of oysters from Wheeler’s. That should strike the right note. Wonder if she’ll remember?’

  ‘Oysters? Are you sure? Well! And there I was, thinking she was your sergeant’s bit of fluff!’

  ‘Not very ladylike language, Dorcas,’ Joe said automatically. ‘Good God! I mean – well, well! As you say! To tell the truth, I think my sergeant was fond of her, but I’ll tell you something else, child. He’s had a lucky escape. She wasn’t the girl for him! Though, come to think of it – she may be exactly the girl for Mathurin.’