6.The Alcatraz Rose (13 page)

“It could be friend or a fan who remembers them.”

“You’re kidding, right? That would be even harder.”

Kingston sighed. “I suppose so. It was a good idea while it lasted.”

Ten minutes later Kingston stood by the car outside Emma’s house after having said goodbye to her with a promise to keep in touch. He’d reluctantly declined her offer of tea. It was getting late and he had a long drive ahead. As she opened the red front door, she stopped and turned to face him.

“Don’t get me wrong, Lawrence,” she called out. “I didn’t mean to be a wet blanket. I think you should follow up on your band idea. You’ve nothing to lose. In any case”—she smiled saucily—“you’re not going to be doing much else in the coming days, by the looks of it.”

“That’s true, but I was hoping that we—you and I—could continue to, well, work as a team.”

“Oh, I think you can manage this one perfectly well without my help.” She smiled. “I doubt Andrew will object to your tracking down a group of octogenarian musicians.”

Kingston had to smile back at that.

He gave her a goodbye wave, got in the car, and drove off.

12

K
INGSTON WOKE LATE
the next morning. It had been a wrinkled-sheet night of successive dreams—none memorable—punctuated by lingering thoughts of the day’s exploits. The opportunity to see Reginald Payne’s extraordinary garden had been a high point and, of course, working with Emma. Considering it was their first excursion together, he couldn’t have been more pleased. Their chemistry surpassed anything that he’d anticipated or hoped for. He could not recall any awkward moments, unease, or ticklish differences of opinion. If anything, the outing had left him with a growing respect for her abilities, a greater appreciation of her quick-witted humor, and an awareness of how comfortable he now felt in her company.

Despite her lukewarm reaction to his band idea, he planned on pursuing it anyway. In fact, the next time they met or talked, he was going to tell her about a hero of his, Scotland Yard’s celebrated Victorian-era Detective Inspector Jonathan Whicher, who had once said—an observation Kingston had long ago committed to memory—“The detective’s job is to reconstruct history from tiny indicators, clues, fossils. These traces are both pathways and remnants: trails back to a tangible event in the past and tiny scraps of that event, souvenirs.”

Whicher’s pronouncement certainly applied to a number of cases that Kingston had worked on over the years. If not for a tiny porcelain Meissen figurine, sitting on a mantelpiece in a stranger’s house, Kingston wouldn’t have solved the mystery of his missing colleague and two murders. Were it not for a wire coat hanger that the police had overlooked but he’d bothered to study in detail, he could not have followed the
trail to a London dry-cleaning establishment, where he would eventually solve the crime, putting another murderer behind bars.

The problem that now faced him was that with no clues or “souvenirs,” he didn’t know how to go about a search, where to start. The Internet was the obvious place, but unless the pubescent members of the band had gone on to make some kind of mark for themselves in the musical world, a Google search would be unlikely to reveal anything. At best, it would simply provide names and a brief résumé of the group. After that, where could he go, whom could he talk to? Why was so little known about a man who, according to his sister, had been very successful in his chosen career and appeared to have accumulated sufficient wealth to enjoy a life that few people could afford? Beechwood would have cost plenty.

He wandered into the kitchen, surprised to find Mrs. Tripp already there and making tea. They wished each other good morning, and she put a plate on the table. “My Arthur asked for apple scones, and I made extra for you and for Mr. Andrew.”

Kingston offered enthusiastic thanks which, as usual, embarrassed her.

Mrs. Tripp had been organizing Kingston’s life for more than six years, and he couldn’t imagine functioning without her. He had told her about his trip to see Julie, and it occurred to him now that there was no need for her to come to the house during that time. Andrew could check in once a week to make sure nothing catastrophic had happened.

“Mrs. Tripp, you know that I’ll be leaving for the States soon,” he said.

“Ooh, that’s right. Tell me the dates again.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll write it all down, like I always do. Anyway, I don’t see any reason for you to work while I’m on vacation. So I am giving you a vacation, also—paid, of course—”

“Oh, Doctor, that’s hardly necessary—”

“Yes, it is, no arguing.”

“Oh, Doctor . . . well . . . thank you.” She stopped there, before she lost her composure.

Minutes later, a cup of Earl Grey tea with a slice of lemon and scone crumbs and the
Times
on the table in front of him, he was starting to feel part of the world again. Rarely did his early-morning routine change. He would read the newspaper front to back, often tearing out pages
containing articles that he would read later. That done, he would go to the cryptic crossword puzzle.

He was on the last page of the second section, when a photograph caught his eye. It was the front of a shop, and it looked familiar. He took a closer look, and a smile crossed his face.

For a moment he was transported back several decades, reflecting on the many occasions when he had visited London for seminars and conferences and long weekends with Megan. Over the years on those trips he’d bought many records and, later, CDs, at Dobells. The store was a Mecca for anyone with a love of jazz, a place to hang out, where you could find records that were available nowhere else, and where occasionally you might run into a famous musician or two. Memories of those long-gone days and the music of that era were powerful, and they rekindled warm feelings of nostalgia and happy times.

If anybody would have knowledge of an obscure band that played around the London suburbs in the early fifties, it would be people who had been associated in one way or another with Dobells: the people organizing the exhibition, musicians, former staff, frequent visitors to the shop. What’s more, the call was out already to track down contributors to the exhibit, the very kind of people who might remember a band that played sixty years ago at the Red Lion in North Harrow and, with luck, their young drummer.

Spotting a telephone number at the foot of the page, he picked up the phone. His call was answered in a flash, by a man who introduced himself as “Matt Robbins, Dobells Exhibit.”

Kingston told Robbins why he was calling, using a cock-and-bull story about Payne’s expatriate sister in Canada trying to determine if he was still alive, after their having lost contact in the fifties. Robbins said that he’d be happy to put word out about Kingston’s search via the rapidly growing e-mail database they’d established since going online with the exhibit. Kingston left his contact numbers and thanked Robbins.

No sooner had he put down the phone than it started ringing.

“Lawrence Kingston,” he said, thinking it might be Robbins, with a forgotten question.

“There you are. So what have you been up to these past few days? I stopped by and phoned, but your mobile was off.”

Kingston smiled. “Andrew, good to hear your voice. Sorry about that. I was only gone for one day. I went down to Gloucestershire again.”

“To see Emma, no doubt?”

“Yes. We went back to Payne’s house and talked to his sister. And before you get your knickers in a twist, it was all aboveboard, and Grace, Payne’s sister, was very cooperative. We even did a walk about the garden.”

“This all had to do with the rose, I take it?”

“Of course. As a matter of fact, Emma was all for it. I also had lunch with her the day before—at the Ivy.”

“The Ivy? This is getting serious, by the sound of it.”

“It’s not at all like what you’re thinking. She called me saying that she’d come across something unusual that had a bearing on the Alcatraz rose mystery and was coming up to London that day for an eye exam. What would you have done?”

“So what was the ‘something unusual’?”

“She’d found a book at Letty’s foster parents’ house with an inscription inside that could link the dear departed Reggie Payne with the Alcatraz rose.”

“Really? I was right, then?”

“About what?”

“When I said that your—quote—innocent investigation into the mystery rose would end up being far from innocent.” He laughed. “Lawrence, your plots don’t thicken, they coagulate.”

Kingston described the inscription, speculating on its possible significance, opining, for Andrew’s sake only, that in the end it would probably turn out to be nothing more than a coincidence. The phone call ended amicably, with their agreeing to get together for dinner at the Antelope, three nights hence.

The day before that dinner, Kingston received a call back from Matt Robbins. He said that although the response to his request had been disappointing, he had received an e-mail from one Harry Walters, living in Pinner, who had been a regular at the Red Lion pub in North Harrow back then. He claimed his sister was going out with the trombone player of one particularly popular band at the time. Robbins gave Kingston the man’s phone number and wished him good luck.

The phone was answered not with a hello or even the person’s name, but with the number called, which Kingston always found off-putting.

“Is this Harry Walters?”

“One and the same.”

“My name’s Lawrence Kingston. I was just talking to Matt Robbins, the fellow who’s organizing the Dobells exhibit. You’d answered his inquiry about a band in North Harrow.”

“Oh, right. The lads who used to play at that pub near the train station. The Red Lion.”

“They’re the ones.”

“What would you like to know?”

“Anything and everything you can recall.”

“Well, back in the early fifties, me and me mates used to go see them on Saturday nights. They played there regularly, what must ’ave been for quite a few months. Now and then we’d sit and ’ave drinks with ’em when they’d finished playin’. Considering that they were a bunch of youngsters, they were bloody good. Trad jazz, we used to call it in those days—New Orleans revival.”

For a second, Kingston flashed back to the crossword puzzle answer a few days ago: REVIVAL. It must have been an omen.

“I remember it well,” Kingston said, smiling. “Whenever I got the chance, I used to knock around Soho in those days. I saw most of the bands that were playing at the time: Chris Barber, Ken Colyer, Cy Laurie. I’ve still got a lot of their records.”

“So you’re an old geezer, too, then?”

Kingston chuckled. “You could say that. Tell me what you remember about the band members. How many were there?”

“Six, usually.”

“How old were they?”

“I wouldn’t know. Late teens, I suppose—a couple a little older, maybe. They were a snazzy-looking group, wore white shirts and black ties, not like a lot of today’s long-’aired, rock ’n’ roll soap dodgers. The trumpet player was Jeremy Lock, of course. And Keith Sheldon played the clarinet. Trombone was a ginger-haired lad called Johnny Daniels. As a matter of fact, my kid sister was knocking around with ’im for a while.”

“And the others?”

“Let’s see—Billy Wells, banjo. Desmond Scott on double bass, and the drummer, Brian . . . umm . . . Jennings. That’s right, Brian Jennings.”

Kingston frowned. “Brian Jennings? Not Reggie Payne?”

“Nah. It were Jennings.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“Did they ever have another drummer sit in? A substitute?”

“Nah. Not that I’m aware of. And I would ’ave known.”

Yes
, Kingston thought.
It sounds like he would have
.

“What happened to the band?” he asked. “Did they go on to play elsewhere?”

“I don’t think so. I think they just broke up. If they ’ad played somewhere else, I would ’ave found out through me sister.”

“Well, Harry, you’ve been very helpful. I can’t thank you enough.”

“Your name again?”

“Lawrence Kingston. Maybe we’ll see each other at the exhibition. I’d enjoy that.”

“Me, too. Don’t ’esitate to call me if you ’ave any more questions, Mr. Kingston.”