Diana's Altar Page 7

  “It’s not amusing, Joe. Goings-on went on and Death paid a visit. I believe he was invited in. Women were abused in some way in that house last night.”

  “I’m sure that’s the case. We have an enquiry to make without bias to sex or class,” he agreed quickly. “You don’t need to remind me.”

  Adelaide sighed with impatience. “I wasn’t about to deliver a feminist lecture. You can dismantle those defences you seem to have erected—I wouldn’t waste time preaching to the converted. I’ve met your sister . . .”

  “. . . and admired the work she’s done on me over the years?”

  “Joe, there’s precious little energy left for stamping about defending my feminist position in the face of the ignorant, shell-backed males who seem to lord it over our society. I’m a pragmatist. I save my energies for fighting every day to patch up, clean up, heal and repair whenever I’m presented with a case of suffering, whether it’s a woman, man or child who needs it.”

  “A noble sentiment. You’ll hear no arguments from me.”

  “Not noble. No—naïve. It sounds, even to my ears, like childish idealism. At my age I should know better than to be showing shining eyes and a soft underbelly to the world. I ought by now to have grown a tough hide, a seen-it-all leer and an ability for accounting. But doctoring’s my mainspring. It’s hard to explain to anyone who’s not experienced a vocation. It’s not a profession I’ve chosen. It’s a life that’s chosen me. A job I was born equipped to do.”

  “Of course I understand! No need to be so lofty!” Joe’s tone was more acerbic than he would have wished. No fool, he was interpreting this heavier-than-required statement as the prepared prologue to the phone call she had been sidetracked from making earlier in the day. Her answer to his simple question, “When will you marry me, Adelaide?”

  For all sorts of reasons he had already anticipated, he rather thought his answer was to be: “Never.”

  “I understand because I could swear I also march to an imposed rhythm. I can’t say policing’s in my blood stream . . . an inherited compulsion. We’re farmers and fighters and everyone in my family thinks I’m nuts for taking on the job. But there it is—I use my energies to combat injustice and crime. I’m not going to negate the value of that by calling it naïve. Present me with a corpse and it hangs around my neck like the Ancient Mariner’s albatross until I can find release by identifying the killer.”

  “Whether the corpse is in another man’s territory or not?”

  Joe pretended to take a moment to consider this. “Whoever. Wherever. For as long as it takes.”

  Adelaide looked at him steadily. “You’re going to pay a visit, aren’t you? You’re going out to Madingley to introduce yourself to Sir Gregory Pertinax, the Host from Hell?”

  “Not introduce myself. No. We’re already known to each other, Sir Gregory and I. We have an acquaintance in common. I shall be dropping by to say hello. I’m quite certain he will not have forgotten our last meeting.” He smiled and murmured, “I shall just have to hope he’s forgiven me. He has a famous collection of paintings including one or two gems by Watteau, and he invited me to call in and view them whenever I was in the county. He’ll be surprised to see me taking him up on this but can hardly send me away.”

  “You risk muddying the water for Adam, don’t you?”

  “There’s always that. But I’ll run the risk, if risk there be. I’ll leave my visit until I hear that Hunnyton has done his stuff and cleared off, then I’ll dip my toe into whatever polluted pond he’s left behind. I was planning to spend some of the afternoon at least doing what I was summoned here to do and learn more about Aidan’s death. I want to go back with you to All Hallows. Along with the constable who helped you.”

  “PC Risby?”

  “Yes. I’ve arranged with Hunnyton to release him for a reconstruction of the scene at three this afternoon. It begins to look as though the only way I can get you into church is to march you down the aisle under police escort. Pity!”

  Chapter 8

  Mayfair, London

  “Mr. Barnes! Didn’t I say I was not to be interrupted?

  I have a pile of mail to get through before lunch. I say again, old feller, I’m not to be interrupted. If the Prince of Wales has come a-calling, tell him to come back at teatime.”

  Dorothy Despond gave her butler a smile so vivid and teasing he had the courage to persist. “I had understood your instructions, miss, and have, indeed, been following them scrupulously for the last two hours. But there is a gentleman trying to contact you as a matter of some urgency by means of the telephone. Mr. Joseph Sandilands of Scotland Yard presents his compliments and would . . .”

  “Joe! Why didn’t you say? Is he still there or have you cut him off?”

  Dorothy was already on her way out of the morning room and did not see Barnes’s sly smile or hear his, “I left the assistant commissioner dangling on the line, miss.”

  By the time she lifted the receiver in her father’s study, her voice had recovered its usual blend of warmth and composure. “Joe, are you still there? How wonderful to hear from you! It must be six weeks since we last met . . . Arabella Coombes’s ball, I seem to remember. You were looking radiant in a peacock blue cummerbund.”

  “Sadly no contact, Dorothy, but I’ve been following your progress through the English social calendar via the pages of Mayfair Miscellany. I like to keep a discreet eye on the villains in my patch. The ‘Forthcoming Marriages’ section of the Telegraph is likewise a pretty reliable guide to the exploits of the rich and scurrilous. But—I’m puzzled not to have read a single announcement of an engagement of yours to some unfortunate aristocrat since early September. I thought you must have gone off to Paris to bother the French.”

  “Do you imagine I would ever again dare to announce my matrimonial plans in the press for the world to see? You’d arrest the poor bloke I had in mind and stick him in jug! I’ve seen the way you operate.”

  “Come, come, Dorothy! The last fate worse than death I saved you from was sighted only last Tuesday playing an accordion for pennies in Trafalgar Square. At liberty. Unmasked, perhaps, but unjugged.”

  “Well, I haven’t been to Paris. It was New York. Business.”

  “Good pickings?”

  “I’ll answer that when I’ve put them through the auction room. Nothing you can afford so don’t get excited.”

  “There is something you might help me with though, Dorothy. Just a little matter . . .”

  “There always is but it’s never the right matter and it’s never little. You want the low down on some poor chap?”

  “Please! And as low as possible.”

  “Who is it this time?”

  “Pertinax.”

  “Same to you!”

  “It’s a surname. Not a curse. Sir Gregory Pertinax of that ilk. If indeed that ilk exists . . . Where do you look for the territory of the Pertinaces? Are they a tribe? I’ve never come across it on map or in the telephone book.”

  “You won’t. His number is ex-directory, though I can let you have it if you really want it. The name is borrowed or stolen, the lands bought, not inherited. By his grandfather, I believe. The founding father suffered from delusions of grandeur. His origins are obscure—eastern European like my own. Up towards Russia it’s thought. A place where the skin is lily-white, the eyes of ice and the soul of steel . . .”

  “Don’t forget the red-hot temper, Dorothy.”

  “Or the ambition. This refugee made a lot of money (or arrived in London with his pockets already full) and treated himself to all the trappings.”

  “The first trapping being what he considered a good name.”

  “Well, a strong and imposing name at least. ‘Good’ is debatable. It belonged originally to a Roman emperor, I think. Long dead and in no position to dispute possession. I can’t give you any dates. But Pertinax was the f
irst of the five emperors in the year of the emperors, Sir Gregory told me when I enquired. I’d no idea what he was talking about.”

  “The knighthood . . . baronetcy . . . or whatever he has? The ‘sir’—where does that come from?”

  “It’s an inheritable title. Something to do with suspenders or garters . . . I’m sure you know the one. Well worth having. Duly bought—something you could do in those days if you knew the right political pocket to stuff with your contribution—along with a house in the country, a mansion in London and a seat in the House of Westminster. Lavish parties, shooting, fishing and all that razzmatazz followed. Your rackety Prince Edward—the one before the present one—was a regular visitor.”

  “Can’t say I blame him! Would you have wanted to spend a quiet evening at home with his mama?”

  “When Pertinax died, those days were largely over. His son chose to lead a quiet life, becoming thoroughly English and doing what an English gent would do on inheriting a fortune in those spacious days before the war—he enjoyed it. The enjoyment consisted of spending quite a lot of his father’s resources on—I’m delighted to say—art. He had an eye and used it at a time when pictures were going for a song or a glass of absinthe. He’s rumoured to have done very well. So the Pertinax dynasty can’t be all bad, I suppose. Gregory—Pertinax the Third, the one I introduced you to at the Snettishams’ dinner party—continues in the art collecting tradition, which is why you found him paying court to me so busily—and then warned him off in your inimitable way.”

  “Awful cheek, Dorothy! I know you can look after yourself and I should have minded my own business . . .” he began.

  Dorothy Despond was the daughter of a formidable and fashionable American art dealer, also a young lady wealthy in her own right. Beautiful, well-travelled and unfettered by any tradition she chose not to respect, Dorothy inevitably invited comment. She was held (by the London cognoscenti) variously to be a scandalous woman never encountered outside a nightclub, a bluestocking able to out-talk the president of the Royal Society or a dangerously modern woman striding out under a banner in Pall Mall. The cognoscenti, on this occasion, had it just about right. He could have added—to the eligible gentlemen who elbowed themselves hopefully into her orbit—a tease, a challenge and the answer to all their prayers.

  She was quiet for a moment and then said, “Not at all, Joe. I was grateful for your intervention. I assumed at the time you had some special knowledge of the man and were concerned that he shouldn’t get too close to me. It was the only reason I could think of for your spilling a glass of claret down his dress trousers . . . and then escorting him from the room to help him change. What a nerve!”

  “Least I could do to preserve the honour of a woman for whom I have the highest regard. My wine-spilling hand is eternally at your service, Dorothy. Besides there are a hundred other good reasons for putting Pertinax out of circulation. The man’s a menace.”

  “He’s crossed swords with my father on occasion in the sale room. Pa’s opinion is much the same as yours.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about his business deals. It’s his personal life . . . his morals . . . Oh, dear! I can’t say much and what I am allowed to say will make me sound like a Dutch uncle lecturing his wayward niece.”

  “It’s okay, Joe. I’ve met men like that before—roving hands under the tablecloth. That’s always a bit of a clue. But here at Castle Despond, it’s not the ones who appear at the front gate with a battering ram I have to defend myself from. It’s the sneaky smiling rogues who know where the sally port is located that I need to keep an eye on.”

  Intrigued by the notion of Dorothy’s sally port, Joe was for a moment robbed of words. “Um . . . well . . .” He collected himself and rushed on, “Speaking as a sneaky, smiling rogue in search of a sally port—not yours, Dorothy—I was wondering if you’d mind awfully giving this chap a ring on my behalf. I’m seeking an entrée. I need to brazen my way into his house and speak to him. That’s Madingley Court up here in Cambridgeshire. I’m here as the Met helping out the local CID with a possible murder case. But undercover, you understand. You find me installed in the station enjoying their hospitality, especially their phone line.”

  “Adam Hunnyton has a problem, has he? Oh dear! I wouldn’t like to think of sweet Adam going a single round with ghastly Gregory! Glad you’re there to help him, Joe. It takes a villain to catch a villain, I’ve always thought. I’ll give you whatever I have but, being a female, I don’t have the kind of information you may be looking for. The dirt that sticks kind.”

  “No, Dorothy, it’s information you do have I’d like to pry from you. I’ve got a notebook here. It’s his art collection I want to hear about. At the Snettishams—do you remember? Before the wine was spilled, I was trying unsuccessfully to divert him with my own smart-aleck arty remarks. He wasn’t really listening as his attention was entirely on you. But he was distracted enough to mutter at one point—before he had to shuffle off to change his trousers—that if I was ever in the county I might like to see his collection . . .”

  “Oh! Yes! I remember! You mentioned . . . was it Watteau? He has one or two good ones. Got it! Do you have a pencil in your hand? Right then, I’ll mark your card. I’ll tell you all I can remember about his collection, which may well be more than he knows himself. But take it with a pinch of salt, will you? The information comes from my father who is not an admirer, and he never forgives a man who beats him to a bargain at auction. With the exception of you, of course . . . You’d be surprised, and not a little embarrassed, to hear how often he tells the story of how he was done down at Christie’s by your low cunning. A cunning that gets lower with every telling.”

  Joe scribbled down a fascinating mixture of inventory, deals, prices, opinions, suppositions and sale room scandal as it flowed from the girl’s capacious memory.

  Coming to the end of her information, she added, “Never forget, Joe, that in this game—and it is a game—your judgement of a picture is all that matters. I’ve heard you holding forth, and you can be very convincing. Wrong—but persuasive enough to make me think twice. You can do this. If you’re going into the arena with Pertinax, all you need is bags of guile and a loaded Browning, and I know you have both.”

  She listened to Joe’s rush of thanks with dismissive murmurs and finally, “But do understand that the man’s a stinker. The Roman connection is unclear to me and probably just a laughable bit of arriviste posing, but I do remember one disturbing thing he told me—the motto of the Emperor Pertinax. It seemed important to him. The man sets some store by his family’s adopted slogan, Joe. They’ve even had it put on their coat of arms apparently and that’s a clear statement of who you want to be, what you want to achieve, I’ve always thought. This one’s more like a battle cry. It’s: Militemus!”

  “‘Let’s be soldiers’? ‘Let’s go a-soldiering’?” Joe struggled with the translation. “I shall take that as ‘Let’s fight!”’ He chortled his approval. “How pertinent of Pertinax! I’m sure I can oblige!”

  “Fisticuffs at dawn? How exciting! Well, good luck! Remember to throw sand in his eyes. I’m here in London for the next two weeks if you should need a shield-bearer. Be sure to let me know how round two goes.” Then, tentatively: “Joe . . . ?”

  He sensed she was teetering on the edge of telling him to take care of himself. Womanly warnings were not what he needed or expected from Dorothy. Something a little more sinew-stiffening was required, and she’d already handed him what he wanted: the silken token of her favour to tuck in his breast pocket and the brisk, unsentimental words of a Spartan mother, unspoken yet suddenly coursing through his mind: “Come back with your shield or on it!” This was a good moment to break off the conversation and as lightly as possible.

  “Mon ange! Dorothée, tu es mon ange!” Joe purred in the silken accent of Maurice Chevalier. “And you smell heavenly too! What is that perfume?”

  “It
’s Mitsou . . . Oh! You clown!” She put the receiver back on the hook, giggling.

  Which she always did when that policeman called, Mr. Barnes noted as he passed the open door.

  The smile faded on Dorothy’s lips and she picked up the telephone again and requested a Cambridge number.

  “Gregory? Dorothy Despond here . . . No, this is business . . . Listen. I know I can always interest you in making a tidy sum for no effort at all . . . The Watteau—yes, that Watteau! Time to move it on, I recall your saying, I think? You remember the policeman who ruined your best . . .” Dorothy held the telephone slightly away from her ear, riding out the storm of abuse that followed. “Have you finished? You know I don’t listen to rude words and shouting, Gregory. Behave yourself! You may be able to do a deal with him . . . Oh, come on! . . . Candy from a baby . . . No, no percentage necessary—just think of it as reparation for the trousers . . .”

  Chapter 9

  Smiling, Joe put down the receiver of the telephone in Hunnyton’s office in the police headquarters in St. Andrew’s Street. He crossed Dorothy off his list and addressed himself to the next name. He picked up the receiver again immediately and asked the operator for another number.

  The receptionist at the Garden House hotel greeted him with pleasure, real or feigned, but there was nothing feigned about his recollection that Joe had stayed with them on previous occasions over the summer. The suite he preferred—room 201—was remembered, declared immediately available and would be made ready for his instant occupation. And the assistant commissioner’s assistant? The young lady in room 206? No, no. She would not be accompanying him on this occasion, but garage room for a motorcar would be welcome.

  The next call secured the occupant for the garage space. Mr. Simpson of Simpson’s Car Hire down Mill Road would be delighted to supply him with the Lagonda M45 that he’d hired in the summer. Would he be requiring the services of a chauffeur? Joe politely declined. Would he like it delivered? To the Garden House again? The keys would be left at the reception desk. No trouble at all, Commissioner. Out of season Cambridge, Joe thought with a smile of satisfaction. He wouldn’t have wanted to be making these arrangements in the spring. He’d have been reduced to an attic room in Hunnyton’s digs and a clapped-out Morris.