England Expects (9 page)

Chapter 12

Loneliness is but fear of life
.

T
hat evening, when Mirabelle locked the office door, it was almost seven o’clock. By five, everyone else had been ready to leave. Bill wanted to chase up information about Joey’s notebook on his way home and Vesta was being picked up by Charlie. The young couple planned to go for a walk in the evening sunshine before it was time to disappear into the maze of the Lanes and Charlie took his place at his drum kit. All afternoon there had been snatches of music from the direction of the pier – songs from the American hit parade, Mirabelle guessed. The notes rose high on the heat and seeped into the houses, flats and offices opposite the seashore and just behind. Vesta’s ankle beat out the rhythm, one high-heeled shoe dangling from her foot as she kept time.

‘We’re going to pick up fish and chips.’ The girl checked her vermilion lipstick in the mirror of a compact her mother had given her when she left home three years ago. Much of the inlaid diamanté had fallen out and the design of intertwined roses on the surface was scratched. As she got up to pull on her red coat she turned. ‘Won’t you come with us, Mirabelle? It’s such a gorgeous evening.’

‘Come on, ladies.’ Charlie checked his watch. ‘There’ll be a queue at Shackleton’s by the time we get there – best fish and chips in town.’

This started a debate with Bill who swore by Bardsley’s, especially for the haddock. The extra walk, he said, was worth it.

Mirabelle sighed. All this banal talk meant nothing. Two people were dead. ‘I’m not hungry,’ she said and waved them off. ‘I’ll finish here.’

As the door closed and the sound of footsteps descended to the street Mirabelle could still discern the tenor of Vesta’s voice, the men a bass line below her, debating the quality and quantity of chips in their chosen establishments and the merits of salt and vinegar in differing proportions.

Alone at last, Mirabelle leaned back in her chair and shut her eyes. God, she could do with a whisky. She had spent most of the afternoon trying to piece together the jigsaw that had landed on her desk. As yet there was too much that was uncertain, and Bill’s intermittent comments and Vesta’s fanciful attempts to construct a whole picture out of what could only be described as intriguing scraps had made it diffcult for her to focus. Jack always said a good agent had to keep an open mind and stick to the facts. There had been times when Vesta seemed to wilfully ignore not only one but several facts simply to make a theory fit. Perhaps that was why the girl was so good with paperwork. She could make connections between people and events that seemingly weren’t connected at all. It had stood her in good stead when she worked at Halley Insurance down the hall, and even here at McGuigan & McGuigan the skill proved occasionally useful even if it wasn’t what was required at this stage of an investigation.

Mirabelle considered Joey Gillingham, his notebook and his sister on the one hand and Mrs Chapman, her interest in horse racing and her cleaning duties on the other. After almost two hours, there were still only two things that appeared to hold the murders together – the masons and the horses. The nub of the matter, she realised, might be either of these or, indeed, both. Certainly, the journalist and the cleaning lady had connections at the racetrack and possibly at the lodge. But they had died so differently. A murderer usually killed by one
method or another – slitting a man’s throat was quite a different matter from poisoning an old woman. Perhaps it indicated two separate murderers who may or may not be working together.

Mirabelle pulled on her summer jacket, turned the key in the lock and walked down the stairs and onto the street. Outside, the air was still thick with the heat of the day and there was a palpable air of excitement in the streets. She pulled out her sunglasses and began to walk up East Street. This was not her habitual route home but she had a call to make.

Bypassing Bartholomew Square police station and casting only a cursory glance at the dark window of Detective Superintendent McGregor’s office, she disappeared into the lanes beyond the Victorian edifice. In the sunshine the ramshackle buildings looked more like the remains of a medieval village. The sounds of heated discussions and gales of laughter emanated from the pubs.

When Mirabelle first arrived in Brighton these streets were the narrowest she’d ever seen. In places the russet pantiles of one house kissed those of another across the cobbles. These, however, weren’t the smallest lanes in Brighton. This way and that, passageways the width of a garden gate snaked off, and now Mirabelle disappeared down one. There wasn’t enough room for two people to pass. Where a pedestrian encountered anyone else they had to slip past sideways. There was no proper pavement either, just a rough stone gutter down the side of the beaten earth.

Mirabelle kept her eyes down. It was easy to trip on the uneven surface. She didn’t like to think what it must be like at night – the street lighting at either end didn’t extend over the pathway. But that was why Fred had decided to locate himself here – tucked conveniently out of the way, only accessible once you knew where to go. The passage was used by drunken old men out of their minds on Blue Billy – a lethal mixture of
methylated spirits and Brasso – and by young lovers looking for somewhere to go in the half-light on their way home. The police rarely came here.

About two thirds along, Mirabelle stopped. To the left there was a row of tiny cottages – all but one abandoned. This, she knew, was far too picturesque a description – the cottages were slums. The wooden frames of the filthy windows were split and rotten, and the doors were spattered with mud as high as the handles. The roof had caved in on one, and the stench from privies concealed behind the facades pervaded the air. Mirabelle slipped her sunglasses into her bag and knocked on the green door.

The man who opened it was more dapper than might be expected. In his early forties, he wore an immaculate white shirt tucked into a pair of tweed trousers and stood six foot in his well-polished brown brogues. The scent of aftershave, a breath of sandalwood, emanated from his person. His eyes brightened when he saw who was standing on the doorstep.

‘Miss Bevan.’ He stepped back, running his hand over his greying hair. ‘Please come in.’

Mirabelle glided over the threshold. Inside, the room was lit by three gas lamps. The atmosphere was dank, as if the summer sunshine had never penetrated the cottage. Mirabelle couldn’t see the walls because there were boxes piled as high as the ceiling. In fact, the room was almost full. Apart from a few passages between his illicit stock and a small area he’d cleared so he could sit down, the place was at full capacity – all of it black market.

‘Fred,’ Mirabelle nodded in greeting, ‘good evening.’

‘I’m glad to see you.’ Fred smiled. ‘You’ve come for a bottle of malt?’

Mirabelle shook her head.

‘I ain’t got more of those chocolates, I’m sorry to say.’

The chocolates had been for Vesta’s birthday. She perched on the edge of a pile of boxes that appeared to contain tinned orange juice on the bottom layer and behind her a loosely woven basket of fresh eggs.

‘Well, perhaps I will take some Glenlivet if you have it, Fred, but it’s not really what I came for.’

Fred disappeared among his stock. ‘I got lovely bottles of French perfume. Shalimar,’ he called. ‘Diffcult to come by. You can’t pick up this stuff even in Burlington Arcade these days.’ He peered from behind the boxes but Mirabelle shook her head. She wore Chanel. Always had.

‘Stockings, then? Silk. Fine gauge. American.’

Mirabelle’s eyes fell to her calves. She hadn’t worn stockings today – not only because of the weather, but because she was running out and didn’t want to waste what she had. It mattered less in the good weather. Or perhaps her standards were slipping. She considered this as she enquired how much they were.

Fred appeared holding a bottle of whisky which he laid on top of a wooden packing case cum shop counter. ‘Daylight robbery, of course,’ he grinned, revealing toothy gaps in his smile. ‘You need a nice fancy man to see you right, Miss Bevan. You shouldn’t be paying for all this yourself. Mr Duggan wouldn’t have wanted you to be on your own.’

Mirabelle froze. Fred was one of the very few people who knew about her affair with Jack. He’d been one of Jack’s agents in the early days. Jack always said he was a survivor. ‘Fred’s the cream,’ he said. ‘It’s effortless for him. He’ll always rise to the top, doesn’t matter where you put him. War or no war, Fred’ll always do all right.’

When Fred had gone missing in the south of France in 1942 Jack had refused to give up on him and, sure enough, he surfaced seven months later, arriving back in England off a ship from Bilbao. In an attaché case he carried a German code-book he’d picked up in mysterious circumstances and in a
leather trunk he’d smuggled a nine-year-old Jewish boy who had been orphaned.

‘I couldn’t help myself,’ he’d said with a beaming smile. ‘Now you’re gonna want to debrief me, aintcha? The old Marylebone Hotel, eh? Well, let’s get on with it. You best check I’m not a double agent now I’ve a kid to look after.’

He was irrepressible. Some of the situations Fred had faced might crush another man, but Jack said he was an ideal agent – solid as they came. And despite his Cockney accent he spoke French as if he’d been born there.

When Fred turned up in Brighton earlier that year, Mirabelle wasn’t surprised he was pushing goods on the black market. He’d always had that edge – right and wrong were relative to him, not absolute. He was some kind of magician. That’s probably how he’d survived. She’d bumped into him coming out of a pub on the Lanes.

‘Miss Bevan!’ he’d greeted her delightedly, as if the last time he’d seen her had been a jolly social occasion perhaps a week or two before. ‘I didn’t know you was in Brighton. How’s Mr Duggan? Has he made an honest woman of you yet?’

It had been diffcult to tell him about Jack’s death but what else could she say when he asked after his old spymaster?

‘Oh, I’m sorry, love. I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘You come and visit me. I got a place just round from the Black Horse. Past the pub and turn down this little path you’d miss if you didn’t know it was there. Ignore the tramps – they ain’t no real bother. Green door. I got whatever you’re after.’

If she hadn’t known him from her wartime days she’d never have considered it. As it was, Mirabelle had wanted to buy Vesta a box of chocolates for her birthday and a bottle of nice whisky for herself. The truth was that she missed the antiseptic taste of a clean malt. The whisky generally available was an anodyne blend that scarcely tasted like the malt Jack used to
drink. What really drew her in though was the connection to her old life. It was diffcult to resist. She’d known Fred for years – far longer than anyone else in Brighton. In 1940 – thirteen years ago now – Jack had taken Fred and Mirabelle for a drink in a hotel on Berkeley Square just as the Dunkirk fiasco had erupted. When every other Allied soldier was coming back to Blighty, Jack dispatched Fred in the opposite direction. The drinks had been their way of saying goodbye. Jack hadn’t seemed to mind letting Fred know about his affair. He’d introduced Mirabelle as his best girl and she had blushed. After all, there wasn’t a polite name in English for ‘mistress’.

‘You make a nice couple, don’t ya? Bet you keep it a secret, eh? Mrs Duggan and all. I got a wife myself,’ Fred admitted. ‘We don’t get on neither. Still, you gotta make things work the best you can.’

Now Mirabelle directed her gaze to the bottle of whisky Fred had left on the counter. She wondered what had happened to Fred’s wife. Not that she’d dream of enquiring. Fred seemed perfectly happy, but then he always had.

‘I’ll take three pairs of the stockings,’ she said. ‘And it isn’t Glenlivet in that bottle, is it?’

Fred winked at her. ‘It’s the nearest I’ve got, Miss Bevan. From Speyside. Straight up. I’ve been drinking it myself – you know I love a tipple and there’s nothing like Scotch. This one’s cask strength. It’ll knock these stockings off.’ He giggled good-naturedly as he leaned down and took three packets from inside a tea chest and laid them beside the bottle. ‘You got to add a finger of water to open up the taste. When you do, it’s lovely. Now would you like it or not?’

Mirabelle nodded as Fred brought out a large brown paper bag.

‘Can’t have people seeing now, can we?’ He popped Mirabelle’s items inside. ‘You sure you don’t want some eggs? You could do with feeding up, Miss Bevan.’

Mirabelle shook her head. Buying luxuries on the black market was one thing but she didn’t want to pick up day-to-day items from Fred’s stock. Someone, somewhere might be doing without. ‘It wouldn’t feel right,’ she explained.

‘However you reason it,’ he said, lifting a solitary hen’s egg from the basket before wrapping it in half a sheet of newspaper and popping it into the bag. ‘Have one on me, eh?’ He held out his hand for payment.

Mirabelle passed him a note and waited as he counted the change from his pocket into her hand.

‘So, what else is there? Come on. You got something on your mind.’

‘It’s that fellow who had his throat cut. In the new barber’s? Did you hear about it? I thought you might have met him.’

‘Joey Gillingham? Yeah. Sure.’ Fred looked serious. ‘He was a right one for the horses. I’ve met him a few times at Freshfield Road and up in London. I gave him a half-bottle of brandy once when he tipped me a winner on the dogs at White City.’

‘I wondered if you’d heard anything about his murder? Anything that hasn’t been in the papers?’

Fred rubbed his chin. ‘I could put myself in the way of hearing something if you want. Is there anything in particular, Miss Bevan?’

‘Are you a freemason, Fred?’

Fred’s face betrayed his surprise at this question. It was, Mirabelle noted, the first time she’d ever seen him look surprised in all the years she’d known him.

‘I used to be, Miss Bevan. Used to be. When I was a young man, between the wars. These days I don’t believe in nothing. Not God and not worshipful brotherhood either.’

‘Joey Gillingham’s murder might have had something to do with the masons. I don’t know what. Perhaps he was a freemason. Perhaps he got caught up in some masonic activity – something questionable. The police who found his body were
certainly brothers. They removed the corpse from the scene of the crime very quickly. I want to know what they saw and why they did that.’