Fall of Angels Read online

  Redfyre said his farewell and took over. “Sarge, get a message delivered. I want Mister Tyrrell found and warned that I shall need urgently to have a word or two tomorrow morning. I’ll see him in his college. Now I’m going to have a few words with Doctor Coote, and then, Master, if you don’t mind, I’ll leave my team here to cordon off the area and tidy up. The constable will remain on duty for the night, but everyone else may go about their business. Thank you, everyone, for your help with this distressing situation.” He glanced around, seeing the bright, open expressions of men eager to help dimming with disappointment at the lack of resolution, a feeling of deflation at the end of what had been such a triumphant musical performance. He was keen to avoid sending them home with a sour taste in their mouths, so he added, chin raised, “How fortunate we are that the heroine of the evening appears unscathed by her fall, in both body and spirit! I’m sure we’ll all be hearing from Miss Proudfoot again before long.” And he added, flooding them all with a warm optimism, “Entertaining the angels in Cambridge!”

  “Hear! Hear! Look forward to that!”

  “Wonderful evening, apart from the . . . um . . .”

  “Lucky escape, what!”

  “Addenbrooke’s will see she’s all right.”

  “Glad you were there, old chap! Well done!”

  One by one, they shook Redfyre’s hand with a cheery, distancing comment and went on their way, duty done, hurrying now to escape to their warm homes and their suppers with a dashed good story to tell—a story in which they’d played a part. It even had a happy ending to please an eager audience.

  The last man had deliberately hung back and now stood silently, waiting to take his leave. A figure designed not to draw attention to itself, Redfyre reckoned. Of medium height, dark-suited, fedora in hand, a polite smile enlivening his pale features, the man put out his hand with exaggerated ceremony, clearly anticipating a rejection by the inspector. Redfyre seized the hand offered and retained it, holding it in a tighter grip than circumstances warranted. He drew the man aside and murmured in his ear. “Mister Scrivener, I believe? I’m rather surprised that you’ve chosen to make yourself known. The sixth entry in the sergeant’s list of interesting parties? I see you failed to state your profession, sir. I think I have the pleasure of addressing Sebastian Scrivener, chief reporter on the Cambridge Tittle-Tattle? The particular slant of the articles you put out in the summer might well have warned of a frosty reception from the law. I’d have given me a wide berth if I were you.”

  “Pleased to meet you too, Inspector, at last. You’re a rather unapproachable fellow.” The smile was easy, unimpressed by Redfyre’s sarcastic growling.

  “Crime correspondent, if I’m not mistaken?”

  “I just report on life—and death—as I find it, Inspector,” was the bland reply. “In an impartial way, of course.”

  “And I just arrest troublemakers, wasters of police time and tormentors of the English language. In a likewise impartial way.”

  Icy smiles were exchanged.

  “A trumpet enthusiast like me, I was astonished to note,” Scrivener said. “I wasn’t aware our local plod had musical sensitivities. An ear for the classics? I wouldn’t have thought they knew their Arne from their elbow! But crime—of special interest to both of us, surely? Was there crime done here this night? Was there bloodshed?” he enquired innocently, eyes scanning the medieval tiles under his feet in mock disbelief.

  “You have a lot of questions, sir, and I’m not answering any of them. There’s nothing for you to report. Unless you think a patch of gore streaming from the nose of the newshound who’d upset the chief plod would be of interest to the readers? There, I can oblige. No?” Redfyre asked easily. “Then do at least let me help you with your copy. That much I am able to do, knowing what your readers expect—indeed I am one of them—I suggest:

  A delighted audience was treated to a memorable concert by two up-and-coming young musicians. Miss Proudfoot (trumpet) wore a gown by Captain Molyneux of London and Paris. Doctor Coote (organ) wore a gown by Messrs. Ede and Ravenscroft of Trumpington Street, Cambridge.

  A Christmas cornucopia of ancient music by composers from Albinoni to Zieleński was much enjoyed. The evening ended with a rousing rendition by soloists and audience of that old favourite: “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” We all went home humming the tunes.

  “See if you can squeeze that on to page eleven. If you need any help with the spelling of ‘Mikolaj Zieleński,’ just give me a ring.”

  As he left, Scrivener breathed a comment on the inspector. Amused, Redfyre added “toffee-nosed toss-pot” to “pompous prat” in his evening’s haul of appreciative reviews.

  A weary hour later, Redfyre dismissed Christopher Coote and turned to his uniformed staff to deliver final instructions, then looked about for Earwig, certain that she had disobeyed him and gone off without permission. He had no right to detain her, and he was sure that she’d seen through his bluster. He was quite sure also that she had a good deal of worldly knowledge and experience outside the repertoire of most women her age.

  Suddenly, she was out of the shadows and at his side. “Somewhere more comfortable, I think you promised?”

  Any other female speaking those words while linking her arm through a gentleman’s in such a familiar way would have been thought to show flirtatious intent, if not erotic promise. From Earwig Stretton, the words carried all the allure of an invitation to tea with the Spanish Inquisition.

  Still, at least she’d decided to stay. “Yes, shall we get this over with? The taxis will all have disappeared.” He glanced at her feet. “How well are you shod?”

  She stuck out a foot for inspection and gave him a derisive smile. “I never wear anything I can’t outrun a policeman in. These shoes are the softest of leather, but they’ll take me anywhere you may suggest, unless you’re proposing a spot of night climbing over the rooftops. For that, I should have to find my gym shoes.”

  “And conveniently lose your vertigo?” he asked, not expecting an answer and not disappointed when he didn’t get one.

  Once out in the courtyard they both stopped, speechless—breath caught by the sudden onslaught of cold air, hearts stopped by the unearthly beauty of the December night. They looked up silently at the rooftops of the colleges. Elegantly frosted by a slight fall of snow, a Gustave Doré landscape of pinnacles, turrets, domes and cornices unfolded above them, outlined against the dark sky by a three-parts-rounded, hunchbacked moon.

  Redfyre broke the too-long silence. “Ah, moon be waxing gibbous!” he said, affecting a practical countryman’s voice in an awkward attempt to avoid any comment that might have been interpreted as romantic. He couldn’t imagine an evening and a place more conducive to romance and with the right girl on his arm the possibilities would have been intoxicating. Instead of resorting to the words of his wartime sergeant, a Suffolk man who’d announced the weather and the phases of the moon over No Man’s Land every night, he’d have selected some choice words of Shakespeare, because no other poet would have been equal to expressing his feelings. But, present company being so clearly the wrong girl, he found his ragbag brain had come up with Sergeant Rose’s “waxing gibbous.”

  Earwig shuddered. At his verbal clumsiness? Probably, but at least she echoed his unromantic mood. “Spooky!” she said. “The moon in any shape has always scared me stiff. Have you noticed it always comes up in a direction you weren’t expecting? It slides in and spies on us. You turn around and there it is, whispering, ‘I know what you did!’ It drives people mad.”

  “I think Mark Twain must have had the same feelings of foreboding,” Redfyre said, reaching for a writer he thought he could count on to be a favourite with a girl brought up with boys and much in tune with Redfyre’s own good-humoured skepticism. “‘Everyone is a moon,’ he said, ‘and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.’”

  “Oo! Do yo
u have a mysterious dark side you never show to anyone, John? I mean, as well as the mysterious dark side you present to the world.”

  “Me? Side, front, back—all as clear as a mountain stream.”

  Breaking the mood, he urged her to move on. “No night climbing tonight. It’s the off-season, even for those with a head for it. So how about a little night walking? What do you say to a quarter of a mile through the most civilised streets of this fair city?” he said with a bonhomie he didn’t feel. “A few cobbles and a haunted lane to negotiate, but you have a chivalrous right arm to fend off the drunks and a chivalrous left to hold on to, should the pavements have iced over while we’ve been in here communing with the angels. Or was it the devil? I’m hoping you’ll tell me, Earwig.”

  Chapter 4

  In the parlour of the Blue Boar, nineteen-year-old Thomas Tyrrell was kissing his first girl.

  If this was kissing? He couldn’t be certain, but she’d allowed him to apply his eager lips to her ear and remain there in contact for longer than was quite proper. The ear was silky and cold and smelled of an English herb garden. Pears soap. At least he recognised the scent. The brand’s advertising jingle came reassuringly to mind: “Preparing to be a beautiful lady . . .” Yet another indication that the girl he was nuzzling like an over-eager colt was indeed a lady. A girl from his world, where the ladies’ bathroom was supplied with Pears soap, the gentlemen’s with bars of bracing Coal Tar. He’d heard that “girls of the town” put Soir de Paris or something equally bold behind their ears and on their necks to ensnare innocent young scholars. Rouged cheeks and lipstick were another indication of a loose woman. He glanced down. The full pink lips were alluring, but their sweet curves owed nothing to artifice, not even a sheen of Vaseline.

  Lois, she’d said her name was. And her appearance was as smart as her name. Fashionably short calf-length dress, bobbed hair under a cheeky fur toque, matching fur wrap slung casually over one shoulder, giving her the air of a dashing Hussar from an earlier age. Very pretty, and too young for such a sophisticated outfit, he reckoned. The kind of girl who normally turned her nose up at undergraduates. Thomas had often wondered how on earth you found such a girl. And now he knew. You didn’t. She found you. Barely five minutes into the interval, he was still adjusting the curtains on the stairs when she’d approached him, looking quite distraught. He’d hurried to offer assistance, and she’d asked him to help her find her handbag, carelessly left under her seat.

  He’d calmed her girlish flutterings with a confident male optimism that the bag would turn up. No one in this audience would dream of walking off with it, and if it had been picked up, it would have been handed in to him as he stood on duty at the door. But someone might well have unintentionally displaced it with a clumsy foot in the rush for the refreshment room. If the worst occurred, he promised her that he’d give her a shilling for her taxi fare home. In a show of efficiency, he had established in which section she had been seated and suggested they start their search, Lois at the front, himself at the back and working towards the middle.

  It was surprising what people had chosen to temporarily abandon under and on their seats, Thomas thought, encountering a pair of gum boots (what on earth did the owner currently have on his feet?), a thermos flask, a copy of War and Peace and many hats and scarves. On his second row, he came upon a lady’s bag. Black leather, as she’d specified. He called out Lois’s name and held it up triumphantly to show her. To his disappointment, it was received with a pantomime he’d seen employed by his little sisters. The thumb of one hand went down, while simultaneously the thumb and forefinger of the other pinched her nose in a gesture of disgust, usually accompanied by “Yikes! Smelly!” or some such. He looked again at the bag and saw his mistake. He’d fished out an up-from-the-country, district-nurse bag, capacious and battered. He put it back where he’d found it.

  A moment later, he came upon another bag, lurking unseen under a fallen striped college scarf. Not an evening bag, but small and neat, like the girl herself. Not wishing to look the fool a second time, Tyrrell was in a dilemma. He resolved it quickly by ducking down below the seats and surreptitiously opening the bag. He’d no idea what he was looking for, but as soon as he turned his torch on it, he knew he’d found the right one. The beam skipped over a reassuringly rich and predictable female clutter, highlighting a gleam of silver, a wisp of white lace handkerchief, a glint of enamel from a tiny implement he recognised as Cartier perfume spray. Better yet, in plain view was an envelope addressed in bold writing to a Miss L. Lawrence at “Midsummer View” on de Montfort Avenue. One of those big, red-brick houses across the river, occupied by bank managers, city councillors and other overblown characters—nouveau riche, he’d heard them called.

  Smiling relief and gushing gratitude, she’d settled down with him in a pew and he watched while she opened her bag, on his advice, to check that the contents were intact. A silver powder compact, a key ring, a diary, the perfume spray, a bag of mint humbugs, a purse with rather a large number of pound and ten shilling notes folded into it, all proved to be present and correct. No wonder she’d been concerned! Even then, he’d wondered about the cash. Could she be a working woman? Friday was payday, after all, in the mysterious world outside where people, some of them female these days, had jobs.

  They’d talked on long after it was necessary. It had been surprisingly easy. A brief exchange of names and they’d plunged into a discussion of the performance. She seemed to know a lot about music and was flatteringly interested in his own musical career and his tastes. All too soon, the ten minute bell sounded the approaching end of the interval, and they had turned to look at each other in dismay.

  “You must excuse me, Miss . . . er, Lois.” He’d stumbled through a swift account of the duties he had now to perform to ease the progress of Miss Proudfoot to the loft and get the second half of the concert underway.

  She’d clutched at his arm. “You must do your officiating, of course! Never neglect a duty. But I won’t leave you there, Thomas,” she’d said, “in the middle of a sentence. It’s 1923, not 1823, and I won’t behave like a Jane Austen heroine. We have lots more to say to each other, so why don’t we continue our conversation somewhere else? I’ll wait for you at the main door, and when you’ve finished whisking about, scattering rose petals and making safe the way of Her Ladyship, we can slip out together! We’ll have an hour all to ourselves.”

  They’d sneaked out together. It had been her idea to come here.

  Discreetly seated in the parlour of the Blue Boar, it suddenly occurred to him that, having dashed out in his academic dress, he had absolutely no money on his person. A frantic search of the sleeves of his gown, which sometimes turned up the odd half-crown, this evening offered him no more than an apple core and an inch of fluff. He’d leapt up in dismay. She’d laughed as she passed him a ten-bob note. “Don’t worry, Thomas! You can pay next time. I’ll have a glass of amontillado sherry, please. I’m sure they have one. Oh, and can you bring me a pickled egg and a ham sandwich? I’m starving! Have one yourself.”

  And here they were, two pints of strong, manly ale, two elegantly feminine sherries and a pickled egg and ham sandwich or two later, canoodling.

  A sudden inrush of gentlemen, chattering volubly about music, cut through his alcoholic haze and, in dismay, Thomas began to wail. What was the time? Good Lord! He’d missed his cue! Had they all managed without him? Had the master noted his absence? Old Henningham was a stickler for the formalities.

  Lois tried to calm him. Of course they would all have managed! It really wasn’t important. No, they obviously hadn’t set the bulldogs on his trail. Probably, no one had even noticed he wasn’t there. What a fusspot! Too late, he noticed that her comforting tone had soured to scathing. She rose and announced she was going to see if the establishment had a decent ladies’ room.

  Ten minutes later, it dawned on Thomas that she wasn’t going to return.


  He’d been ditched, rejected, cast aside. How dare she? It was all her fault, if you thought about it! Hurt was turning to resentment, the sting of betrayal to the heat of righteous anger. He desperately needed to have a word with the uppity Miss Lois. Teach her some good manners! If he moved off quickly, he might overtake her before she picked up a taxi in the Market Square. She couldn’t have gone far. He took a moment to try to still his whirling brain and his queasy stomach. In a moment of clarity, he remembered with a surge of waspish triumph that he knew where she lived. “Midsummer View” indeed! How pretentious! How typical of hoi polloi! Who did these city girls think they were? Taxi? There were no buses out to the wilderness north of the river at this hour. The girl was alone. A woman would never be attempting the long walk along the river bank unaccompanied. He wouldn’t have attempted it himself. Town was full of ghastly thugs who’d chuck an undergraduate in the Cam and laugh their socks off when they heard him scream. If he missed her in the Market Square, he could simply take the next cab and direct it to de Montfort Avenue.

  Adding to his confusion and devastation, he tuned in to the loud and alarming conversation of the group of men who’d just entered and seated themselves with their drinks at the next table.

  “Awful scene! Are we sure she was dead?” said one round-eyed gent, downing a whisky.

  “Not polite to linger and stare, of course, but I’d say she was a goner,” opined a voice from behind a half of bitters. “I was in the front row. Witnessed the whole thing! That scream—more like a death rattle! Poor child! Do you suppose she saw it coming? I mean, all that throat-clutching and teetering on the edge? Made out she was having us on, but I don’t know . . . A portent, would that be? Did she know she was doomed?”