England Expects (3 page)

The Superintendent stared out of the car window at an old bombsite. There were plenty of places where the detritus hadn’t been cleared – years after the initial strike. On some sites no one had any idea what to build. They’d reconstructed the old viaduct on the London Road and the Odeon cinema when they had been hit. Out here where the railway line had been destroyed one night during an air raid, the ground was still strewn with bricks though the train tracks were long repaired.

‘So,’ McGregor asked, ‘what do you reckon about our Mr Gillingham?’

Mirabelle sighed. ‘If you’re going to slit someone’s throat you’ve got to be a committed killer. You’ve got to be harbouring a grievance or be commissioned by someone harbouring a grievance. I don’t know, Superintendent, but Joey Gillingham was in Brighton very early and the racecourse isn’t open today. So either there’s a woman involved – and a man would slit the throat of his wife’s lover, so I’d rule that out before anything else – or he was onto something connected with his work. Something dangerous. The second seems more likely – no one tonight associated Joey with women. No one had even seen him with one.’

‘You think he was murdered over a betting scam? Match fixing?’

Mirabelle nodded. ‘Perhaps he just owed a lot of money to someone particularly nasty. But then, even if you owe an awful lot of money a creditor doesn’t usually kill you. They’re not going to get their money back that way. It’s far more likely they’ll have a hard man beat you up – perhaps break a leg or a couple of ribs. Isn’t that the way?’

‘You would know,’ McGregor teased. ‘Miss McGuigan & McGuigan Debt Recovery.’

Mirabelle ignored the joke. ‘Anyway, Joey Gillingham didn’t die by mistake because a heavy went too far. Whoever killed him meant to do it. And I keep coming back to the fact that he was a journalist. So, my guess is that he was onto something, perhaps a betting scam, like you say. The racecourse or the boxing ring. Lots of the men tonight had taken tips from Joey. He had a sense of who was going to win and he was generous with his hunches. If I were looking into it, I’d check the racecourse and the bookmakers. Does it remind you of when we first met?’ she said and immediately wished she could take back the words.

Two years before, just after McGregor bagged the Superintendent’s job, Mirabelle’s boss, Ben McGuigan, had gone missing at Brighton racecourse. He’d discovered a money-laundering operation which had ultimately cost him his life.

McGregor smiled shyly. ‘Well, a love affair aside, Mr Gillingham’s editor didn’t know any reason for him to be in Brighton by eight this morning, so I reckon you’re right.’

Mirabelle shook her head. ‘The editor wouldn’t necessarily come clean. Justice for one of his stringers might not be his top priority. If Joey was in Brighton on a story, the paper would want to put another reporter onto it, not have the police all over everything before they had the chance to get their headline.’

McGregor considered this. ‘Fair enough. And, of course, the reason Gillingham died might have been in the room with us tonight. Someone might have wanted to stop him getting to the fight.’

Mirabelle shrugged. ‘It’s more interesting, isn’t it, why he was in Brighton so early? It doesn’t make sense. That’s where the mystery lies. For my money.’

The Superintendent had to concede she was right.

They had made it as far as the front. The sun was sinking below the horizon in a gorgeous peachy glow. As they passed
the pier the strings of illuminations turned off, and the jetty plunged into darkness. The Kingsway was quiet tonight and the only pedestrian they saw was a policeman on his beat. They didn’t speak again until McGregor pulled up at The Lawns.

From the front seat Mirabelle glanced at the long black windows of her flat on the first floor. ‘I don’t suppose there was any clue in his death mask?’

‘I only saw him on the slab and by then his eyes were closed,’ McGregor admitted.

‘You didn’t see him at the barber’s?’

‘No. Robinson had dispatched the body to the mortuary by the time I arrived. No harm in it – it was a hot summer’s day and there were a lot of people around. It’s a busy part of town. It wasn’t as if there was any dubiety about the cause of death.’

An expression passed across Mirabelle’s face – a silent question. He didn’t answer it.

‘And did Mr Robinson take a photograph of Mr Gillingham’s corpse while it was still in the chair?’ she enquired.

McGregor shook his head and said nothing.

‘Thank you, Superintendent,’ she said. ‘I hope you catch your man.’

McGregor was about to speak, but Mirabelle had uncrossed her long legs, opened the car door briskly and was on her way up the steps before he could gather himself. He’d expected to have more time to say good night. It had been on the tip of his tongue to ask her to the cinema at the weekend and to dinner. There was a nice little place along the coast, though admittedly it wasn’t the Savoy. She might have waited for him to open the car door like a gentleman. Her perfume lingered.

‘Good night,’ he called as the front door closed at the top of the steps. He wished Mirabelle wasn’t so formal. He’d like her to call him by his first name. It had been a while since anyone had used it. No one down here knew him well enough.

His heart sank in the ensuing silence. He waited for the lamp to light the first-floor drawing room but instead of a warm yellow glow there was only a dark movement behind the glass. Mirabelle Bevan’s pale outline was framed for a moment in the black window, a vision hovering above him in the darkness. Then she drew the curtains.

Chapter 4

The secret of getting ahead is getting started
.

T
he next morning in the office Mirabelle waited patiently for Bill Turpin to settle into his chair. It was Tuesday and Bill always spent an hour or two on paperwork. Tuesday was the start of the midweek lull. For those punters who were struggling financially, any money earned over the weekend was long gone, and for most of them payday didn’t loom till Friday. As far as clients went, Monday and Thursday were the days the agency was commissioned. The result was that Tuesday and Wednesday marked a quiet period in the office – time to catch up.

‘Bill, I wondered if you’d heard anything else about Joey Gillingham?’ said Mirabelle.

Vesta looked up from eating a slice of cinnamon toast. This was also a Tuesday occurrence. On Tuesdays and Thursdays Charlie’s early shifts left Vesta bereft of a breakfast companion. It always made Mirabelle smile – twice a week the office smelled gloriously of coffee and toast, as it always had before Charlie arrived.

Bill took a deep breath as if he was reluctant to speak. ‘Well, I don’t like it. They’re in a right old tizzy at the station. It’s just a load of nonsense and it’ll mess up the investigation. It already has.’

‘What do you mean?’

Bill squirmed uncomfortably. ‘Utter nonsense,’ he repeated. ‘It’s a professional job – the bloke obviously got into bother with someone he owed money. I mean, look at his trade. And
they’re trying to cover it up ’cause of all that rubbish of theirs. Secret handshakes and the like. Next they’ll be making out he was a saint. A sports writer on a red top. It ain’t right.’

Vesta licked her fingers. ‘What are you on about, Bill?’

‘All that dressing up. It’s just plain silly. I wouldn’t demean myself. I done my duty in the war.’

Vesta stared at Mirabelle, her expression a question mark.

‘Oh no!’ Mirabelle burst out. ‘You’re not suggesting that Mr Gillingham was a freemason?’

‘Not just him. They’re all masons in the force. Every one of them. They got it sewed up tight – not just the police but the magistrates, too. Every constable and all the sergeants and higher than that and all. The only reason I got the job when it came up at Wellington Road was ’cause I was good with the police dogs and I’d mind the desk on meeting days. They’d never have let me go when they did if I’d joined their stupid club, but I ain’t one for all that. I’m not a Papist either, mind. Secret languages – worse than Latin. Symbols chalked on walls like Guy Fawkes. Me and Julie are Church of England, see, and they say that’s fine. But Church of England ain’t full of secrets, is it? Church of England is up front. We’re normal.’

Without blinking, Vesta folded the remaining crust of toast neatly into her mouth and took a swig of Camp coffee. ‘What exactly is a freemason?’

‘It’s a boys’ club,’ Mirabelle offered. ‘Like Bill says. They have meetings and dress up, and there are all kinds of ceremonies. If you’re a mason you have to help other masons and sign up to their code of honour. They call it a brotherhood.’

‘Like the Girl Guides? But for men?’

‘Sort of.’ Bill shrugged his shoulders. ‘With secret signals. Private handshakes. Codes. I had it up to here for years when I was in the force. I can tell when a copper’s got something going on with the masons and I could see it today the way they were all hush-hush about that body.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah. I know how it goes. Honestly, I get the knock with it. Drives me potty.’

‘The knock?’

‘You know. It gives me the creeps. Ain’t you heard of anyone getting the knock before?’

Vesta shrugged.

‘I thought everyone knew that. Don’t they say it in London?’

‘Well, not in Bermondsey.’

Mirabelle decided to interrupt their debate on the ins and outs of Sussex dialect. ‘So, what you’re saying, Bill, if I’m not mistaken, is that the police are hushing up certain aspects of Mr Gillingham’s death because he was a fellow mason?’

‘Yeah. I reckon so.’

Mirabelle looked vexed. ‘But wouldn’t they be even keener to catch the killer if Mr Gillingham
was
one of their own? I mean, if one of their brotherhood was murdered, surely they’d want to make sure justice was done? What is it you think they’re hushing up?’

‘They removed the body sharpish, didn’t they?’ Mirabelle nodded and Bill continued. ‘Yeah. So that’s my question. Why did they whisk him off like that? It’s all them secrets – gotta be. I was thinking about it, and it can only be one of three things.’ Here Bill held up three fingers, folding them down one by one as he elucidated. ‘Either the dead man was a mason and they’re hushing it up because somehow they reckon he’ll bring dishonour to the brotherhood. Or, second, you got to consider what had the killer done to the bloke?’ Bill shuddered. ‘And, that, we’ll never find out. Once something like that’s disappeared inside the station, it’s not coming out again. So, they’re hushing it up because it’s a dishonour to the poor guy himself. Or,’ here he lowered his voice, ‘maybe it was them that killed Gillingham. Maybe he’d threatened to reveal something and they had to get rid of him to cover it up.
A heart that conceals
and a tongue that never reveals
. That’s their motto. I’m saying that it might be the freemasons that did it, see? The police themselves.’

Vesta laughed out loud. ‘Oh, come on! Policemen?’ Then her face dropped. The year before, her childhood friend, Lindon, had died in a police cell. No one had yet got to the bottom of what happened. Vesta’s voice trembled. ‘A white guy? A professional? With a proper job? And you think they might have knocked him off?’

‘I always said I should have joined the East Sussex Force, but Julie wanted to stay in town,’ said Bill. ‘So I joined Brighton and I found out pretty quickly it’s like coming up against a brick wall. They won’t let you in on nothing. That didn’t bother me. I had the dogs to see to. I prefer dogs to anyone. But, still, if you want to commit a crime in Brighton and get away with it, pick the time of the masons’ weekly meeting. There’s hardly a policeman on duty for miles. You can get away with murder easy.’

Mirabelle found herself wondering if Detective Superintendent McGregor was a member of the lodge. During the war there had been plenty of freemasons in the service. What Bill said rang true. There had been times when she’d worried the War office was undermanned because so many men had shipped up to Holborn for lodge meetings. It was perfectly respectable. The King had been a member, after all. Still, Jack hadn’t joined. He’d been asked but he wasn’t the kind of man to join a club of any sort – he barely crossed the doorstep of the Athenaeum though his family had organised his membership. Jack always made his own way.

‘Freemasonry? Hobnobbing in aprons,’ he’d said dismissively. ‘It’s only mutual self-interest, Belle, and the only things I’m interested in are you and me. Oh, and winning the war, of course.’

Still, there was no denying that plenty of brave men had
taken up the invitation and not all of them had prospered as a result. There was something touching, Mirabelle always thought, when she attended the wartime funeral of a mason and his loyal brothers crowded the service.

‘Do you know where the lodge is in Brighton?’ she asked.

Bill nodded. ‘Queen’s Road.’

‘Strange. I’ve never noticed it.’ She got up to fetch her coat.

‘They don’t let in women,’ Bill objected. ‘You don’t want to go getting involved, Miss Bevan.’

Vesta’s eyes flicked from Bill to Mirabelle and without hesitation the girl sprang to her feet. There was no question where her best prospects lay for a more interesting Tuesday. Abandoning the day’s administrative tasks, she pulled on her bright red coat and reached for her hat, her hand hovering over the office umbrella before she decided the weather was set enough to leave it behind.

‘Come on!’ she said in reply to the flash of Mirabelle’s eyes.

‘I’m not going to the lodge,’ said Mirabelle. ‘I thought I’d call in to Bartholomew Square to see Superintendent McGregor.’

‘And then have a look at the lodge?’ Vesta called her bluff.

Mirabelle conceded with the tiniest slump of her shoulders.

‘Well, then,’ Vesta smiled, ‘I’ll wait while you speak to Lover Boy.’

Mirabelle’s cheeks flared. ‘Lover Boy? Really, Vesta!’

‘Oh, Mirabelle, the lady doth protest too much, methinks.’

In reply Mirabelle flicked her eyes to inspect Vesta’s bare fourth finger.

‘I like living in sin. Turns out I’m the type.’ The girl frowned as she pushed her boss out of the office.

As they emerged into the sunshine on East Street, Mirabelle put on her dark glasses. Crates of fresh cod had just been delivered to the fish and chip shop and crushed ice dripped down
the sides of the stack, pooling on the paving stones. A warm breeze fetched up the street off the open water.

‘You think there’s a case here, don’t you?’ Vesta ventured.

Mirabelle nodded. ‘Yes, I’m sure of it.’

‘And you want to get involved?’

Mirabelle didn’t respond. Sometimes Vesta wondered how Mirabelle’s mind worked. Potential cases presented themselves on a weekly basis at McGuigan & McGuigan – and plenty of them might have proved profitable – but Mirabelle wouldn’t touch a single one. She had a horror of divorce settlements and family intrigues. Yet something like this – something grisly and dangerous – and she homed in like a missile. Vesta admired her boss’s sense of justice but at the same time it mystified her. As they turned left towards the police station Superintendent McGregor was just leaving. His tall frame ducked into a car at the entrance. Mirabelle waved and he raised his arm as he clambered inside with his hat pulled low over his eyes. She reached out, motioning him to wait, but the Superintendent didn’t notice, the door thudded shut and the car drove away.

The women hovered on the pavement.

‘Well,’ Vesta sighed, ‘perhaps you’ll catch him later. What were you going to ask him anyway?’

‘I want to know if he’s a freemason.’

‘How would you figure that out?’ Vesta watched the vehicle receding down East Street. ‘Do you know the secret code? Is it a handshake? Or a special word? There’s a code word, isn’t there, that you can work into the conversation?’

Vesta had a dramatic bent that in the past had occasionally proved useful. Still, Mirabelle did not approve of it. ‘Don’t be silly. I’m sure there are masonic handshakes – different for different lodges – but it’s only between masons, and I’m obviously not one of those. No, I was simply going to ask him.’

Vesta looked unimpressed. ‘He’d hardly just tell you, would he? Bill said it’s a secret society.’

‘Freemasons don’t confirm they’re freemasons, or at least they don’t have to, but they aren’t allowed to deny it either. They have a whole Judas complex. If I ask him and he says he’s not a freemason, then he isn’t one. There’s nothing dramatic about it.’

Vesta’s eyes narrowed.‘What’s going on between you two, Mirabelle? Have you been seeing Superintendent McGregor?’

Mirabelle looked startled. ‘Only last night.’

‘Dinner, you mean?’ Vesta pushed her. Not that Mirabelle ate.

‘No. I bumped into him. I went to the boxing and he was there. That’s all.’

Vesta took a breath. It gave her a moment to think. There was no point in quizzing Mirabelle more closely. If there was a medal for dodging questions, rather than dodging bullets, then Her Majesty would definitely award it to Miss Bevan. In the two years Vesta had known Mirabelle she still hadn’t scratched very far beneath the surface. When anything personal came up, Mirabelle iced over. It vexed Vesta that, to her boss, the whole world was a crime scene. It was as if she was always on the lookout for something out of place to latch on to – a knot to unravel that took attention away from her tightly coiled emotions. Still, at least it meant she’d always talk about a case.

‘What on earth do you think this is all about, then? I mean, if McGregor is a mason, why is it important? It’s only a bit of dressing up. A funny handshake and a secret meeting. Unless you think Bill’s conspiracy theory is right.’

‘I don’t know yet,’ Mirabelle admitted, ‘but it’s intriguing, isn’t it?’

Vesta considered this. ‘Queen’s Road, then?’

‘Let’s go.’

The walk only took a few minutes from Bartholomew Square. As they climbed the hilly streets Mirabelle looked at the shining new aerials mounted on the roofs. She rarely ventured very far up the roads that led away from the front. Up here, the Georgian horizon was punctuated with a forest of thin metal branches sticking up from elegant buildings in various stages of disrepair.

‘Televisions,’ Vesta nodded. ‘Everyone and his mum got one for the Coronation.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Mirabelle had listened to the ceremony on the wireless as the summer rain beat on the window. It would have felt intrusive to have a screen with a moving picture at home.

‘We saw it on Mrs Agora’s new set,’ Vesta enthused. ‘Charlie baked biscuits – Coronation cookies he called them – and Mrs Agora had us in. It’s like having another auntie. A white one.’ Hot from the exertion of walking up the steep incline, the girl fanned herself with a piece of paper she had folded for the purpose. ‘Is it much farther?’

Mirabelle pointed at the street sign. ‘No, just up here,’ she said, emerging onto the main street past the church. She looked left and right along Queen’s Road. There were pubs as you got closer to the station, and some offices and private accommodation. When she thought about it, there weren’t that many buildings that might house a freemasons’ lodge. ‘Do you think that’s the place, over there?’

‘I can’t believe we never noticed it before. It’s really not much of a secret society, is it?’ Vesta laughed. ‘I mean, if we can find it just like that.’

The lodge was a wide, three-storey stucco building in good repair. Corinthian columns framed the doorway, making it look rather grand, which was odd on Queen’s Road – a street tainted by traffic fumes and rubbish from the station. To one side, a small brass plate announced the building’s function, and
the front door was fitted with a large pane of glass through which a shadowy hallway could just be seen.