Lovelace and Button (International Investigators) Inc. (8 page)

“It's like the Cancer Society selling cigarettes,” Trina complained, but she was immediately shot down by Ms. Stuckenberg.

“Don't be so foolish.”

“Or Alcoholics Anonymous pushing booze.”

“Trina…”

“Or Gamblers Anonymous running bingos.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“Or Girl Guides selling chocolate cookies.”

“Trina… the Girl Guides
do
sell chocolate cookies,” Ms. Stuckenberg shot back.

“Well, they shouldn't. What kind of message does that send to impressionable young girls with weight issues and zits? No wonder teen suicides are on the rise. Maybe I should help them with their fundraising as well.”

“I wish you would,” Ms. Stuckenberg muttered through clenched teeth, adding, loudly, “Have you got any other bright ideas?”

Idea number twenty-eight, “the guinea pig Olympics,” was dismissed without debate, and the twenty-ninth, “the Kidneymobile international marathon,” was only adopted because it was already seven-thirty in the evening and several of the members were dozing off.

“As long as you're prepared to do all the work,” Ms. Stuckenberg opined without troubling the group, “I don't see why we shouldn't adopt this idea.”

“Thank goodness,” Trina muttered, knowing that her thirtieth and final idea — totally naked ballroom dancing — was unlikely to get much applause.

By the time Daphne closes the door to Minnie's flat and walks with Bliss back to his car with her head down, it has started raining again in Westchester.

“I wonder if it will ever brighten,” she says with an eye towards the leaden sky, but Bliss knows where her mind really is, and she confirms it a second later as she climbs into the passenger seat. “I still can't really take it in, David. It's a bit like getting a lump of coal in your Christmas stocking.”

“Superintendent Donaldson has invited us to dinner…” starts Bliss, hoping to cheer her, but she shakes her head.

“You go. I think I'd rather have a bit of time to myself if you don't mind.”

“Okay. I'll drop you at home, and I'll try not to be too late. I have to get back to the office first thing; if I know Edwards he's already interviewing my replacement.”

Dinner with Superintendent Donaldson at the Mitre Hotel is, like all meals with the great man, akin to culinary mountaineering, a point emphasized by the senior officer himself when he polishes off the entire bowl of bar nuts while awaiting the menu. “If it's there, eat it. That's what I say.”

Mike Mainsbridge of the Transport Police has joined his fellow officers with the apparent aim of discussing tactics in the ongoing investigation, but he shows more interest in picking up tips on treasure hunting as he quizzes Bliss over his celebrated discovery of treasure in the Mediterranean Sea.

“What's the chance of finding more of the stuff?” he asks with an air of indifference that fails to disguise the fact that he may be planning an early retirement. “I mean, how did it get there, and how would someone
actually go about searching for more? Where would someone start?”

“Personally, I think I'll start with the deep-fried double-cream Brie,” interjects Donaldson, and Bliss is also working on his choices as he deliberates whether or not to reveal details, to explain that a bunch of renegade Nazi officers had fooled the world near the end of the war by pretending to dump several tons of stolen Jewish gold into Lake Toplitz in the Austrian Alps, when in fact they had loaded their loot into ancient Roman wine amphorae and sunk them off the craggy coast of a Corsican island.

“The breeze just happened to be blowing my way, I guess,” says Bliss cryptically, knowing that his discovery had been predicated on the direction of the notoriously fickle Mediterranean winds. But Mainsbridge wants specifics. “Yeah. But how did you work it out?”

“Ah. You'll just have to wait for the book to come out,” laughs Bliss, and refuses to be drawn further as he scans the menu.

“So you
are
going to write it, then?” Donaldson queries, but Bliss shrouds his plans with vagueness. “Who knows? I'll probably get around to it one day.”

“Why not now?” asks Mainsbridge doggedly.

Because, though Bliss is loath to admit it publicly, a certain female by the name of Daisy LeBlanc would rather he keep her family's skeletons in a securely locked armoire. And Daisy, pronounced “Dizzy” in her Gallic tongue, is one person in the world whom Bliss would rather not disappoint at present.

“I hear you've got something going with a little French…” says Donaldson with a wink, leaving the sentence in the air.

“How the hell…” Bliss shoots back, then realizes that Daphne has been at work. “Go on,” he laughs heartily,
“call her a frog. Yes, if you must know. As Daphne said to me recently, I may not be a spring chicken, but I've had an offer.”

Daisy's very tempting offer, to throw up her life as a French real estate agent to become Mrs. Chief Inspector Bliss, has been on the table for more than a month, but any delaying tactics on Bliss's part have been more to do with his contemplation of becoming Mr. Provençal Real Estate than a desire to fob her off.

Since his celebrated discovery he could leave the police force, and England, at any time and find fortune in his fame by chronicling his adventures, or so he is told. But first he has an obligation to redeem himself in the eyes of his colleagues by putting the skids under the universally despised Chief Superintendent Edwards.

Bliss's promotion to Chief Inspector, touted as a reward for his discovery of the missing treasure, had, he knows, roots that reached much deeper into the murky political underworld of the police force, and he is well aware that Chief Superintendent Edwards had a hand in the decision. “Always keep a dangerous dog on a very short leash,” Edwards once told him, and he was convinced he had drawn Bliss's teeth by giving him a plum job with an office down the hall from his own.

“Interpol Liaison Officer,” said the freshly painted sign on Bliss's door, and he was well aware of the jealous scuttlebutt amongst some of those in the junior ranks who weren't privy to his motives. “So Edwards walked, then,” one of his colleagues said sourly after Bliss failed to show up at the disciplinary hearing that should have got the megalomaniacal Chief Superintendent off everyone's back.

“Just give it time, Bill,” Bliss replied, knowing that, while Edwards might have escaped on this occasion, he was still firmly attached to the other end of the leash.

Daphne's house lights are spilling onto the darkened street as Bliss arrives after midnight.
That's very unusual,
he is thinking, having expected her to be in bed, but as he steps out of his car he's almost flattened by a musical din.

The third movement of Elgar's “Enigma Variations” is playing so loudly on Daphne's record player that she fails to hear Bliss at the door, and he's finally forced to bang on the window. It takes her almost a minute to answer, and he immediately senses a problem as she leans heavily on the door jamb.

“David… I maybe… What? What is it?” she asks, seeing his look of concern. “What… What're you looking at me like that for?”

“Are you all right, Daphne?” he wants to know as he escorts her to the living room and turns down the music.

“Yes. Well, let's just… um… Well, there's a letter from Minnie.”

“Perhaps you should sit down,” he says, and reaches out to guide her.

“I'm all right… I can manage. Thank you,” she says curtly, and firmly throws off his hand.

“I know.”

“Well, don't push, then… You don't need to push… I'm perfectly capable…”

“Just come over here and sit down,” he tries again.

“You're pushing. Don't push… D'ye wanna scotch?”

“No…”

“There's some gin,” she starts, then exclaims, “Oops!” as she loses her balance while reaching for the empty bottle. “Hold tight, Chief Inspector!” she yells as she falls against him. “Lower the gangplank — I'm coming aboard.”

Daphne and Bliss crash together on the settee, and Daphne giggles for more than a minute while Bliss extricates himself and props her against the settee's arm.

“What's this about a letter from Minnie?” Bliss asks, and her laughter turns to tears.

“The stupid fucking — oops, sorry, Chief Inspector, sir,” starts Daphne, then she pulls herself together and sits upright. “S'cuse me… Little Miss Potty Mouth…Where was I? Oh, yes. Silly billy — hah-hah, Minnie's a silly billy.”

She looks to Bliss, pleading for sympathy as her eyes fill up, and she sniffs loudly as she says, “She's a — She's a dead silly billy, David.”

“I know.”

“D'ye know… D'ye know… D'ye know what she did?”

“No.”

“She's a silly — oops, I already said that… She… Are you sure you don't want a scotch?”

“No, honestly —”

“I think I'll have another.”

“Are you certain?”

“No… No… Well, all right, just a teensy-weensy — hah-hah, teensy-weensy, teensy-weensy. Hah-hah, that's funny — teensy-weensy, teensy-weensy, teensy-weensy… That's funny, isn't it, Chief Constable?… Oops, now I've insulted you.”

“Daphne, love, what about Minnie?”

“Stupid fuck — oh, I already said that. Look…” then she slides onto the floor and crawls towards the
coffee table on all fours. Missie Rouge rises from the carpet, her red-haired hackles rising, and backs away warily as Daphne barks at the confused creature. “Woof-woof… woof-woof… hah-hah…”

“Daphne…”

“Oh, yes…” she says, raising herself onto her knees and saluting firmly. “Daphne Ophee… Ophee… Daphne Ophelia Lovelace, number 7311281 reporting, Mr. Chief Constable, sir.”

“What about Minnie?” demands Bliss.

Daphne falls back to the floor and grasps a letter from the coffee table. “Wrong address,” she says clearly as she holds the letter triumphantly aloft for a second, then she crashes headlong onto the carpet.

“Oh, shit!” mutters Bliss as he rushes to her aid.

Five minutes later, Daphne is in her bed, snoring loudly, and Bliss leaves her door wide open so that he can listen to the reassuring sound as he returns to the living room and Minnie's letter.

My dear friend,
starts the letter, as Bliss helps himself to a large scotch and carries on reading.
I don't know how to tell you the bad news. I was so looking forward to seeing all those lovely places you're always talking about — you've been so lucky, but I'm afraid I just got carried away and I don't think I can afford it now. I know I've let you down, but please try to forgive me. You're the only friend I have and I can't bear the thought that I've hurt you. Please forgive me.

“‘Ms. D. Lovelace, 27 Stonebridge Road,'” says Bliss aloud as he reads Minnie's handwriting off the envelope, and he sees the problem immediately. It's Stone
bank,
he says to himself, then he checks the postmark and realizes
that the letter has been bouncing around the sorting office for over a week.

“It sounds suspiciously like a suicide note,” Bliss is telling Donaldson by phone a few minutes later, as he relays the letter's contents.
Which leaves us with something of an embarrassment,
he thinks, though he doesn't say it, realizing that Donaldson is quite capable of working out the ramifications for himself.

“Why the hell did she book that trip if she knew she couldn't afford it?” soliloquizes Donaldson as he looks for a scapegoat while Bliss is wondering who is going to tell the media, the coroner and Stapleton's lawyer that the young man may not only be innocent but may actually be a hero, that Minnie Dennon may well have jumped?

“The media will bloody love this, Dave,” fumes Donaldson, on the same page as Bliss. “I can see the headlines now. I mean, they've made such a big deal about her death, they'll look more stupid than us if they have to admit that Stapleton's innocent.” Then he perks up and grasps at straws. “Of course, we don't know for sure that she planned it. And the boy certainly stole her purse.”

“Or simply kept hold of it because he was traumatized,” adds Bliss, snapping the straw.

“Thanks, Dave. I needed that,” says Donaldson. “Can we discuss this over breakfast?”

“Sorry, guv. I have to leave at seven-thirty, assuming Daphne's slept it off by then. I'll call you from the office.”

Seven-thirty sees the early-morning sun streaming into Daphne's living room, but if Daphne is awake, she's not co-operating. She had slipped to the bathroom at seven o'clock, and Bliss had put the kettle on with a sigh of relief, but her bedroom door had gently closed a few minutes later, and she still hasn't resurfaced.

I bet she's waiting for me to leave,
thinks Bliss, and he is tempted to do so, but the morning television news changes his mind when it is revealed that thirteen pensioners have killed themselves overnight in different parts of the country. “This brings to twenty-seven the number of seniors who have taken their own lives in the past three days alone,” the newscaster says as she introduces a spokeswoman for Age Concern, saying, “I understand agencies like yours are becoming disturbed at this apparent epidemic…”

This is just synchronicity, he tries telling himself, though can't shake off the feeling that Minnie's death may have somehow sparked a series of suicides by elderly people.

By nine o'clock he's pacing. Daphne has obviously been awake for some time and he's beginning to wonder how long she can hide.

I could take her a cup of tea,
he thinks, but he convinces himself that it might be better if she were to deal with her grief in her own way. In any case, he has his own grief to deal with in the form of Chief Superintendent Edwards.