Enter Pale Death Page 6

  The moment he stepped out into the midday sun on King Street, a heavy hand of authority fell on his shoulder from behind.

  “ ’Arf a mo! If you wouldn’t mind, sir? I’m taking you in charge for impersonating a police officer, attempted fraud, confidence trickery and bloody bad acting.”

  At Joe’s start of surprise, Adam Hunnyton released his grip, smiled broadly and growled in his ear, “Fancy a pint, sir? There’s the Fleeing Footman round the corner, or, if you prefer it—the Grenadiers?”

  “I think the Footman had the right idea. Let’s flee with him, shall we? I expect they’ve got a nice little snug round the back where we won’t run into any art lovers. And you can tell me, over a pale ale, how an honest country copper like you got caught up in this shaming display.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The interior of the Fleeing Footman was dark, cool and welcoming. The style of the gentleman behind the bar was similar. His glance flicked for the briefest moment over Joe’s uniform, making the discreet assessment of a good butler, before settling back on Adam Hunnyton, whom he seemed to know.

  “Good to see you again, Mr. Hunnyton. Your usual, would that be?”

  “Yes please. Make that two pints of India Pale Ale, Mr. Pocock. We’ll take them through to the back parlour if that’s convenient.”

  “I was about to make the suggestion. You’ll find you have the room to yourselves and I will divert any further comers, unless you are expecting …?”

  “No, no. It’s just me and the gentleman. We won’t be infesting your belfry for long. We’ll be gone before your first steak pie rolls up.”

  At the mention of steak pie, Joe realised it had been a very long time since breakfast and was about to extend the order but here was Hunnyton waggling his eyebrows in disapproval and muttering, “Put your money away, Commissioner. My round. Here, you are my guest.”

  They simultaneously drank a hole in their tankards of cellar-cold foaming beer and carried them through to the snug parlour. They settled down on a red velvet-covered bench at an oak table and Joe looked about him, admiring the ancient space which had clung on in the Jacobean building, miraculously avoiding being swept away by three hundred years of constant redevelopment and a dozen changing architectural styles. The landlord had, gratifyingly, failed to fall for the temptation of cleaning off the years of brown tobacco smoke from the ceiling and decorating the walls with horse brasses and sporting prints. Though he seemed not to have availed himself of any of the goods from the local auction house to raise the tone either. A homely, moralising print of a drunkard, reeling around in sorry state in the style of Hogarth, was nailed up on a beam next to a more modern caricature of Harry Lauder, the Music Hall singer, offering the room “Just a wee deoch an doris.” A last whisky for the road. The entertainer had left the pub his own “one for the road,” Joe reckoned, a calculating stare convincing him that the drawing (on the back of a menu) was the work of Lauder himself. He’d signed it and smudged the brown whisky ring with his sleeve.

  On the wall over the fireplace, in pride of place, was a framed maxim executed in superb calligraphy in gold letters.

  Fit in dominatu servitus

  in servitute dominatus. Cicero.

  Joe translated freely for himself: “In every master there is a servant; in every servant, a master.” Some sort of nod to the name of this pub, he supposed, and wondered from what or from whom the eponymous Footman was, by tradition, fleeing. Content with his surroundings, he sighed with satisfaction and raised his glass to his companion. “Your good health!” he said. “We’ve earned this!”

  Both men sank half their beer in contemplative silence. Joe judged the moment to say, “Thank you for your support back there in the sale-room, Hunnyton. That unscripted display of disgust was very convincing—and unexpected. But you were going to tell me how—”

  “No. You have the advantage. I’ll humour you. I’ll let you tell me how you guessed. Was it the size twelves? Flattened by a year of pounding the streets?”

  “That, yes … But you recognised my uniform and addressed me correctly by rank. I don’t think anyone outside the force could do that with conviction. It was your name, though, that told me who you were. Not surprisingly. It’s unusual. It’s the name of an officer of a County Constabulary who has recently made enquiries of the art crimes section at the Yard. They keep extensive and meticulous records down there in the basement. And I do my homework! Your name came up an hour ago. I love what some call ‘coincidences,’ don’t you?”

  “I share your scepticism, Commissioner. I’m Superintendent Hunnyton, Cambridgeshire CID, and I’m very pleased to meet you. And entertained! I must say, I thought I’d blow a gasket when you winkled Audley out of his sleek shell. I’ve never encountered anyone actually stamping a foot outside of a romantic novel, but he did it! Well, it was more like a petulant tap of his little patent-leather-shod toe, if I’m being honest. It’ll be all round the coffee-houses by now.”

  “Oh, dear. Yes, I regret upsetting the man. A manipulative, plausible rogue as all will tell you but he’s very good at his job and I admire him. He’s always dealt straight with me.” Joe sighed. “Fences to mend there, I’m afraid. I feel especially guilty since my interest in the affair of the portraits, I’ll confess, is peripheral. It’s certainly not professional and it’s not even personal to me. I’m just acting as agent on behalf of a …” Joe paused. What the hell was the minister to him? “An acquaintance,” he finished lamely.

  Hunnyton grinned. “Truelove ensnares everyone unless they’re fast on their feet. Will he care if he’s curdled your relationship with Audley? Not in the slightest! Get your long spoon out if you’re supping with him, sir.” Correctly reading Joe’s astonished expression, he went on: “He’s using you to get hold of them for him on the quiet, isn’t he? Having scared the opposition off first.” He began to laugh. “Clever bastard,” he added genially. “How high are you instructed to go?”

  “A hundred was suggested. Though he did say I could use my experience and judgement to exceed that if I scented victory.”

  “He certainly trusts you, then? I can’t think of anyone I’d send into a saleroom for me with an open chequebook. What hold has he got on you?” And, to soften the boldness, a hurried and embarrassed: “Look here, Sandilands—sir—if there’s anything I can do … Forgive me—you don’t seem entirely at ease with all this. I’m a useful pair of hands and perhaps we coppers should stick together in the face of exploitation. Just say the word.”

  Joe smiled back over his glass at the troubled eyes and the leathery knuckles nervously swiping a springy quiff of hair from his forehead, glad that the mask was off and that he liked the bluff countryman’s face beneath it. “The word is ‘thanks!’ But sadly, swiftly followed by ‘no thanks,’ Hunnyton. A hold, you say? My instinct is to splutter into my ale and deny he has any such thing. But the fellow is likely to take over the Home Office before we’re much older and by that, become my boss.” Hunnyton gave a sympathetic growl and Joe ventured to say, “Your boss, too. Apart from the political power, he holds the financial strings that the girl I love dangles from and he pipes the tunes she dances to. The Truelove Foundation sponsors research in her department at the university. The man has a scientific interest. He rolls up his sleeves and involves himself at the laboratory level. They work well—and all too frequently—together. He fancies his chances—she rebuffs him in a good-humoured way from time to time.” Joe fell silent. This was a confidence too far. He blamed the draught of excellent ale on an empty stomach and the sympathetic understanding of a stranger. All the same—loose words.

  “Gawd! It’s worse than I thought. Would you like me to push him under a bus for you?”

  Joe laughed, glad of the invitation to make light of his confession and he replied in kind: “Don’t you worry! I have several trained killers on the books who might oblige. I’m sorry to ruin your chances of possessing the miniatures but at least they’ll be ‘going home’ as you said they ough
t. To Truelove’s place in Suffolk. He has an ancestral home out there—not so very far from Cambridge. I expect you know it?”

  Hunnyton nodded.

  “A good and right outcome, I think you’d say?”

  “Yes. None better,” Hunnyton agreed. “If that’s really where they’re going,” he added mysteriously.

  They came to the end of their pints at the same moment and Joe prepared to take his leave. They solemnly exchanged cards, promising to be on hand for each other in any future emergency. Joe thanked Hunnyton for his hospitality and declared a polite intention to visit the pub again and stand his round.

  “Ah. Might be some difficulty there, sir,” the superintendent murmured as he handed Joe his hat. “You see, it’s more of a club here. You have to be a member to buy the drinks. It’s the headquarters of the Federation of Domestic Servants—the ‘Narcissus Club,’ as it’s known. Named for the Narcissus who was slave, secretary and later freedman to the Emperor Claudius. He ran the Roman Empire in the name of his old master for many a year. Not to be confused with the self-regarding youth of legend who liked to peer into pools. Membership is granted to anyone of the rank of senior footman or above. And, of course, you have to have been in service in the family of a gentleman for a minimum of five years.”

  “Good Lord!” Joe said. “There are some strange establishments flourishing within the douce confines of St. James’s!”

  “This is a long way from being the strangest! Have you enquired into the ‘Slippered Orchid’ four doors down?” He shook his shaggy head in disapproval.

  “Can’t wait! Well, it was a pleasure, Superintendent. See you at the sale tomorrow perhaps? It should be quite safe. I don’t think the Minister for Mischief will be making an appearance himself. Have you met the devilish Truelove? Do you know him?”

  “I wondered when you’d ask me that.” Hunnyton began to turn the brim of his bowler through his fingers, deep in thought. Joe didn’t press for a response but let him take his time, mindful that people were very much divided in their opinions of the minister and quite often took a while to think of something polite to say. “I can’t say that I know him. Though I certainly ought to. The man’s my brother.”

  “Your what?” Startled, Joe dropped his fedora to the ground.

  “My younger brother. Half-brother to be precise.”

  Joe snorted, hurried to the door and yelled, “Landlord! Two more pints in the snug please!”

  He returned to the table, glaring at Hunnyton. “I never walk about town without a pair of thumbscrews in my back pocket. Shall I need to use them?”

  Hunnyton held out his hands. “I’ll come quietly. You can pull rank rather than fingernails. That’ll do.”

  “I always find confessions slide down more easily with a steak pie,” Joe said. “I’m sure I heard you mention …”

  Hunnyton went to the door and called, “Confirm order for ale, Mr. Pocock, and will you add to that a couple of steak pies if they’re ready? With horseradish, mustard and mash.” He settled back in his seat. “You’ll enjoy this, sir. Albert in the kitchens used to work for the Duke of Northumberland.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Joe had picked up some relaxed phrases and refreshing attitudes from the American officers he’d worked alongside in the later months of the war. One of his favourites was: Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.

  He reckoned he was well into the stage of enemy action.

  “I’m sure I shall,” he said. “It’s a Tuesday. You save me from the Police Canteen’s version of not very Hot Pot.”

  He’d decided that Hunnyton—if that was his name—had recognised him, had even perhaps been lying in wait for him, and had drawn him here for a purpose. Joe had shared his information on the superintendent’s interest in the portraits but was keeping silent on the second and more interesting record of the name Hunnyton that he’d turned up on police files recently.

  The steak pie was all that had been promised, served swiftly and correctly with a flurry of starched white napery and good silver cutlery laid out on the table between them. By unspoken consent both men held off from serious conversation, content to enjoy a work of culinary art when it was offered.

  “There’s lemon syllabub or Eton mess to follow, or just strawberries,” Hunnyton invited. “The Cambridge Favourites are in season at the moment. New variety.”

  Joe was glad he’d taken the hint and declared for the strawberries; the plump miracles of summer magic were duly served on Delft-patterned dishes with a matching pot of yellow Devon cream so thick it had to be spooned from the jug. Finally, comfortably bloated, relaxed and unharried, Joe calculated that his subject must be feeling much the same and decided to come at him crabwise. “Tell me about your name, Adam. Truelove? Hunnyton? Should I guess at a mother in common?”

  “Not that.” The idea seemed to amuse him. “No, it’s a father we share.”

  Joe absorbed this and was wondering how to frame his next question without giving offence when Hunnyton continued bluntly, “Illegitimate. That’s the word you’re skating around. You could—well, perhaps not you, Commissioner—could say by-blow. Wrong side of the blanket. Baseborn. Bastard. I’ve heard them all.”

  “And I’ve heard it said, Hunnyton, ‘There are no illegitimate children, just illegitimate parents.”

  Hunnyton managed a smile. “Well, the guilty parties in my case were the old Sir Sidney and one of his domestic servants. Before his marriage to James’s mother, the then young and spirited Sidney had an affair with a young and spirited upstairs maid. My mother. She had red hair—a big beauty in the style of Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, who gave the Romans such a bad time. I’m just surprised she let Sidney get away with it undamaged. No one else ever got the better of her. Sorry, sir, it all gets a bit predictable from now on and I risk boring my audience.”

  “Not at all,” Joe said. “I’m all twitching ears and attention.”

  “The inevitable happened. In those days, and I’m not so sure it wouldn’t happen now, the girl would have to leave the village for good or perhaps go and spend a month or two with her aunty in Ipswich. She’d return having mysteriously lost all that weight she’d been putting on. Childless, of course. But in my mother’s case, the pregnant girl was married off hurriedly to a by no means unwilling man on the estate, the whole arrangement sweetened by the offer of a cottage on the village green complete with a half-acre potato patch and bake-oven. I was a six-month baby. ‘Popped out just in time for a slice of his mother’s wedding cake,’ as they say in the village.”

  “And in Westminster!” Joe chortled. “Quite a few of those about, in all ranks of society. No names, no pack-drill, but I can tell you that one or two of our politicians have surprising dates on their birth certificates.”

  Hunnyton grunted. “They can keep it quiet. It’s harder to hide in a small village. Especially when the child is unfortunate enough to grow up looking the spitting image of his real father.”

  “Good lord! Must have been difficult for Mr. Hunnyton, whose name I take it you bear?”

  The craggy features softened in affection. “No. Nothing ever flummoxed the old feller. Head Horseman by trade. That’s a pretty stylish thing to be in Suffolk. It has a certain standing and my stepfather lived up to it. No one would be disrespectful to him or his family, whatever that consisted of. He knew what he was taking on; he loved my mother very much, I think, and he was never less than kind to us. No—he was no Mr. Murdstone.” He grinned. “Dickens would have found no inspiration for a heart-rending family saga in my early situation. Freud wouldn’t have known what to make of a child with a loving mother and two caring fathers.”

  “Two? Old Truelove kept himself in the picture, did he?”

  “He did. I think he took his inspiration from Charles II, whom he much resembled. Charming rogue but affectionate to all his offspring including the illegitimate ones. He had me educated. I outgrew the village school pretty quickly. When he notic
ed this, he put me into private tutoring alongside his other children. This led to three years at the university. Strings were pulled—perhaps money changed hands—and I was offered one of the eleven ‘poor boy’ places at Trinity. Reading a subject useful to my position in life, of course. In the good old tradition, Sir Sidney was having me raised to become steward of the estates. The land and the house were his passion and he was pleased to find, in me, an equal enthusiasm. I’d been keeping the accounts from the age of sixteen, buying stock, helping to run the farm. I was on the payroll from an early age.”

  “A position which gives you access to the best pies in town?”

  “It’s an honorary extended membership these days. I gave up my position of servitude—like many others—when the war broke out. I joined up.”

  “The Suffolk Regiment?”

  “Second battalion. It was quickly mobilised, not short of volunteers, and sent off to France. We were there from Mons to the Armistice. The army changed my perspective. By the end, my mother and stepfather were both dead. I was twenty-six. I wanted to spread my wings. There were openings everywhere for big, healthy chaps like me with a degree in economics and a commission, and I chose the police force. For much the same reasons as yourself, I expect. Once I’d done the basics, promotion was quite quick, and I enjoy the work.”

  “Have you maintained your connections with the present lord of the manor? Sir James?” There was no sign in Joe’s polite enquiry of his intense personal interest in Sir James.

  “We were never bosom pals. I always felt he resented my relationship with his father. Looking like him, thinking like him, did me no good in Master James’s eyes. ‘Stop bossing me about, Adam! You’re as bad as Papa!’ he used to squeak. James favoured his mother. He’s got that family’s dark, handsome looks. And their talent for manipulation.”