The Lost Empress (28 page)

Chapter Thirty-Four

By the time they arrived at the workshop-cum-warehouse where Lionel Scanlon had once breathed new life into the old furniture it had been his passion to restore, the sun had dipped below
the wood
land trees that backed on to the old building, casting
the yar
d before it into shadow. Tayte and Davina left the taxi and crossed the yard to the click of Davina’s heels as she tried to keep pace with Tayte’s long strides. Taking the area in, he thought it no surprise that Lionel Scanlon’s killer had gone about his nefarious business unseen. The woodland shielded the building on one side, and to the other a flyover gave few people cause to pass by. There was a street where the taxi had dropped them off, but it was quiet and set far enough back as to be of little concern to anyone intent on breaking into the property. They reached the gate-like double doors, and Davina unlocked the deadbolts and the heavy padlock that
secured them.

‘You go first, JT. There’s a light switch just inside on your right.’

Tayte entered and found the switch. When the lights came on, he almost jumped out of his skin as an eight-foot-tall grizzly bear swiped a claw at him, or so he’d imagined for the briefest of moments.

‘Sorry,’ Davina said, turning off the alarm. She looked as if she was trying not to smile. ‘I should have warned you. Lionel picked him up at auction, goodness knows how many years ago, and we’ve been stuck with him ever since.’

‘Not much call for antique taxidermy in the Medway area?’

‘You could say that.’

They moved further into the high-ceilinged building, which seemed to accommodate more floor space than had been apparent from the outside. Looking around, Tayte saw a potential Aladdin’s cave of treasures, few items of which he imagined held much value to a burglar in their present state. It was mostly furniture, with other large items such as antique fire surrounds and chandeliers, old picture frames, and an assortment of stone carvings in various states of disrepair. All of which must have aroused their buyer’s interest at some time, but which—like the bear—had yet to find another home.

‘I’ve not been down here much since it happened,’ Davina said. ‘Apart from anything the police might have disturbed, everything should be the same as it was when Lionel . . .’ She paused, unable to finish the sentence.

Tayte rested a hand on her shoulder, trying to comfort her. ‘It’s okay,’ he said, knowing how difficult it must be for her to come back to the scene of her husband’s murder—to stand so close to where Lionel was killed. ‘We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.’

Davina sniffed. ‘No, I’ll be fine, and I do want to. I have to face up to it.’ She moved further in, brushing a hand gently over the things she passed, as if stirring fond memories.

‘Where do we start?’ Tayte said, looking around at all the possible places a notebook could be hidden.

‘Why don’t we take half the room each? You go that way, and I’ll look over here.’

‘Sounds like a plan.’

Tayte moved off to his left as Davina began to rummage among the things to his right. He came to a trunk, which he opened and found empty. He felt around inside it and tapped the base, hoping to discover whether it had a secret bottom, but he quickly decided it did not. It was beside a tall set of drawers—a Wellington chest that, as with everything else, had seen better days. He removed the drawers one at a time in case anything had been taped to the back, but he found nothing. Moving on, he put his hands inside every opening and drawer he came to, scrutinising everything in his path until an hour or more had passed in fruitless pursuit of a notebook he was fast coming to believe wasn’t there.

‘I think you were right,’ he called to Davina. ‘There’s not much else I can check this side.’ There were several other items, and he continued to explore them, but he knew it wouldn’t take more than ten minutes to satisfy himself that they had gone there in vain.

‘Same here,’ Davina said as she came over. ‘Still, it was worth a look.’

Tayte was standing beside a motley collection of antique photographic equipment, some of which he thought must date back to the late 1800s. There was an assortment of smaller cameras, all chipped and tacky with dust. The jewels of the collection—if such a comparison could be made in their present state—appeared to be a pair of mahogany and brass bellows cameras on wooden tripods, complete with dark cloths hanging off their backs.

‘Lionel had a passion for collecting old cameras at one time,’ Davina said. ‘He wound up with far more lost causes than he could ever hoped to have restored.’ She picked one of them up—a Kodak Box Brownie—and opened the case. ‘He had his great-grandfather to thank for that.’

‘Oscar Scanlon?’ Tayte said with interest.

Davina nodded. ‘Lionel told me once that Oscar had a studio in Maidstone. Some of his equipment remained in the family and was handed down, sparking Lionel’s interest.’

Tayte went to one of the tripods and put his head under the dark cloth. He turned the camera to Davina as he looked into the apparatus, and saw her upside down, which amused him enough to draw a small laugh.

‘I’m sure the camera on that other tripod used to belong to Oscar.’

Tayte studied it briefly. Then he threw the cloth over his head as he had before. ‘Now hold perfectly still, ma’am,’ he said in an old Wild West accent, playing the part of the kind of photographer he imagined would have used such equipment back home. When he couldn’t see an image, upside down or otherwise, he came out from under the dark cloth, thinking the front lens cap must have been on, but there was no cap.

He threw the cloth forward over the camera body, exposing the back. It was a wet plate camera, and he thought an old plate must have still been in there, obstructing the view, but there was
no plat
e either. The back was exposed, and now he could clearly see the problem. Inside the body of the camera was a cloth parcel, which he took to contain no more than a collection of items necessary for the camera’s upkeep—until he removed it and unwrapped the material. It was a set of photographs.

Davina came closer. ‘What is it?’

‘I don’t exactly know,’ Tayte said, studying the first image. Whatever it was, it was incomplete. He looked at the next image, which was similar. ‘Words,’ he added. Then as he looked at another image, he felt a tingle of excitement run through him. ‘I think they’re photographs of a document.’

He went to a nearby pedestal desk and spread the photographs out on the faded leather inlay. There were twenty images in all, and they didn’t appear to be in any kind of order, but some clearly
had edges,
like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. He went through them and sorted those with edges from those without. Distinct corners could also be seen, and he was quickly able to put them in place, using the orientation of the words to guide him. When he’d matched the left side, he could see that the image coming to light wasn’t so much a document, but another, much older photograph of a document.

‘It looks as though someone’s taken all these pictures to magnify the original,’ he said as he continued to set the pieces of the puzzle in place. ‘Lionel?’

‘I suppose so, or perhaps his father. I’ve never seen them before.’

The image forming in front of them was not that clear, but it was legible. Judging by the paper and the degree of fading, Tayte thought the photographs must have been taken during the 1970s or 1980s, and it seemed likely that they were taken in order to preserve and expand the original, which by now might otherwise have perished. It led Tayte to wonder, as he had with the telegram, why the original had been preserved at all, and why it had been kept in the Scanlon family all this time.

He found another match and turned to Davina. ‘Most secret,’ he said, drawing her attention to the words.

Davina leaned in and set another piece into place in the bottom right-hand corner. It contained a signature. ‘ “Charles Metcalfe,” ’ she read. ‘ “For and on behalf of the Board of Admiralty.” ’

‘So the clues reveal themselves,’ Tayte said under his breath.

Davina looked puzzled. ‘How on earth did Lionel come by such a thing?’

‘I think that signature goes some way to explaining it. Oscar Scanlon was living at Hamberley when this document was signed. Perhaps it was drawn up and signed at Hamberley, or maybe it was with Charles Metcalfe at his home at some point—long enough for Oscar to take a photograph of it, as has clearly happened.’

Tayte was more intrigued than ever now to know why someone had gone to such lengths to keep the image of this particular document in the family. He continued to put the photographs together, and once the outside of the puzzle was complete, it was only a matter of minutes before the full picture could be seen. Tayte’s eyes were immediately drawn to the name near the top of what was evidently a photograph of a naval court of enquiry—a court martial, where after the outbreak of war, civilians could be tried under the Defence of the Realm Act. It showed a schedule and a summary of evidence against Francis Edwin Saxby, who, on 20 July 1914, was charged with high treason for spying. On the right-hand side it showed a verdict of guilty and the sentence of ‘death by being shot,’ together with another signature confirming that the sentence had been carried out on 5 August 1914.

‘Oh my goodness,’ Davina said, as she seemed to realise what she was looking at. ‘This explains the significance of Saxby’s date of death, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, it does,’ Tayte said, wondering whether Alice had played an anonymous hand in Saxby’s arrest. Perhaps she had tipped off the authorities at some point. Tayte liked to think she had, and he couldn’t imagine Alice would sit back and let the man go unpunished for what he had done—and what he might have gone on to do if she had not. However the arrest came about, Frank Saxby had clearly been uncovered for the spy he was.

Tayte began to read the summary details, which was heavy going given the quality of the images and their disjointed nature. The summary of evidence showed that following Saxby’s arrest on Tuesday, 7 June, various incriminating items were found at his home, such as the materials required to write invisible messages and an envelope bearing an address in Antwerp, Belgium, that was known to the Secret Service Bureau as that of Mr Dierks, one of several men involved in the recruitment of spies for Germany’s spy network. Also found was an Enfield revolver with thirty rounds of ammunition. Tayte came to another section that detailed a further discovery made after Saxby’s arrest.

‘The notebook,’ Tayte said. He pointed to one of the photographs below the section he’d just been reading. ‘It’s mentioned right here.’ He read out the salient points. ‘ “A coded notebook containing names and addresses was also found on the suspect’s person.” ’

‘Names and addresses,’ Davina repeated. ‘Do you think that’s what my husband’s killer is after?’

‘It’s possible, but only his killer or the notebook itself can tell us why, and I think I now know where it is.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes, and it’s no wonder I couldn’t find anything when I looked online, given its “most secret” classification. This was all carried out
in camera
—a private court martial led by Admiral Lord Charles Metcalfe, presumably because he wanted to oversee Saxby’s punishment personally because of his betrayal not only of his country but of the man who had been his lifelong friend. There’s only one place that notebook can be—the non-public Security Intelligence Service archive in London. The notebook should still be there, along with all the other evidence against Saxby.’

‘But if it’s non-public, how can we get to see it?’

Tayte smiled. ‘DI Bishop,’ he said, thinking about the file on Alice Stilwell that Bishop had previously been granted access to. ‘He’s conducting a murder investigation, and that notebook would appear to be a vital piece of evidence. The time that’s lapsed between then and now is also in our favour.’ Tayte started gathering the photographs together. ‘I’ll call him first thing in the morning and explain everything. Maybe I can accompany him to London to see it.’

Chapter Thirty-Five

By three o’clock the following afternoon, Tayte was back at his hotel, waiting for Davina to pick up his call so he could share his good news with her. DI Bishop had just dropped him off after their trip to the government’s SIS archive in London that morning, and he was keen now to get to work on bringing whoever was responsible for Lionel Scanlon’s murder to justice. The call rang for the umpteenth time, and he was about to hang up when a breathless voice answered.

‘Hello.’

‘Davina? It’s JT.’

‘JT! Sorry about that. I had my hands full. I was just taking some boxes out to the car. How did it go?’

‘It went very well,’ Tayte said. ‘Inspector Bishop made a few calls, and I imagine a bunch of other people made a few more calls. It was pretty much as I said last night. The release of information is considered on a case-by-case basis. As Frank Saxby’s file contained information that was deemed useful to a current murder investigation, that was all the justification needed to see it. Everything the SIS had on Saxby was waiting for us in a reading room outside the SIS archive when we arrived. I have the notebook with me now.’

‘They let you take it out?’

‘Yes, they did,’ Tayte said, studying it again as he turned it slowly in his hand. It was a tan, softback notebook that had no remarkable features other than its condition. It was a hundred years old, but it looked like new thanks to the way it had been stored all this time.

‘The writing inside the notebook isn’t Saxby’s,’ Tayte said, thinking back to the reading room where he and Bishop first made the discovery. ‘Given what it contains, I don’t doubt that it was originally penned by Saxby, but this version was most definitely written by someone else.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘Do you remember that one of the incriminating pieces of evidence against Saxby was an address written to someone in Belgium called Dierks?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that was proven to be Saxby’s handwriting. I’ve seen the original letterhead, and that handwriting is very different to the handwriting in the notebook. The style is unchanged from start to finish, too. There’s usually some degree of variation in notebooks, which are typically added to over time. This one appears to have been written in one sitting.’

‘As would happen if someone was making a copy?’ Davina said.

‘Precisely.’

‘Do you have any idea who wrote it?’

‘I believe Alice must have,’ Tayte said. ‘We know Phoebe Dodson had it when the
Empress of Ireland
left Quebec. Given what we now know, an educated guess is that Alice made the copy and left it with Phoebe for safekeeping should anything happen to her. I suspect she had the original on board the ship with her and that it perished when the ship went down, which would have made this copy all the more important to Saxby. He must have known he had no chance of getting the original back when he heard that the
Empress of Ireland
sank.’

‘So what does it contain?’ Davina asked.

‘Names and addresses mostly. It’s all written in code, but it was deciphered a long time ago. I have a decoded transcript to go with it—the handwriting is different again, so I guess it was penned by someone who worked for the government. The addresses are scattered all over the country.’

‘A spy ring?’

‘Could be. It doesn’t say, but I imagine those names and addresses were checked out at the time.’

‘Do you think someone’s after the names and addresses now?’

‘I can’t see why after all this time,’ Tayte said. ‘But then again, right now I don’t know why else anyone would want it.’

‘You said it
mostly
contained names and addresses. Was there something else?’

‘Yes, there was. There’s a further section of code at the back that no one seems to have been able to crack, apart from a few seemingly random words, that is. The transcript shows the exact same letters and numbers. That’s why I have the book now. Knowing what I know from my assignment, Bishop thought I was best placed to have a go at making sense of it all—to try to understand how it could be a motive for your husband’s murder.’

‘Well, two heads can be better than one,’ Davina said. ‘Why don’t we have a look at it together?’

‘I was hoping you’d say that. I told Bishop you might be able to help. Maybe there’s something about your husband that will register with you when you see it. Where are you?’

‘I was just on my way out. I’m taking a few paintings down to the marina. I thought the apartment could use a new look. After that, I thought I’d spend the rest of the afternoon on the boat. Why don’t you meet me there in an hour or so?’

‘Great,’ Tayte said. ‘I’ll—’

Davina cut in. ‘Before you go, I wanted to tell you that I found a receipt earlier this morning. It’s probably nothing, but I thought you should know about it. It was handwritten and paid in cash to Saxby Electrical.’

‘Saxby?’ Tayte repeated. ‘Dean Saxby carried out electrical work for you?’

‘For my husband at the workshop, apparently. I didn’t know anything about it. It was just a few days before Lionel was killed. Didn’t Saxby mention it when you went to see him?’

‘No, he didn’t. Have you told Inspector Bishop?’

‘Not yet. I’ve been too busy with my boxes, and then you called.’

‘I’ll let him know,’ Tayte said. ‘Hold on to that receipt. I’m sure he’ll be interested to see it.’

‘Of course. I’ll see you shortly then.’

Striding along the pontoon boards towards the
Osprey
at Gillingham Marina an hour after his phone call with Davina, Tayte was in high spirits, subconsciously whistling a tune from
Calamity Jane
because the wind had picked up. A keen gust flapped at his jacket and tousled his hair, causing him to look out across the estuary towards the eastern horizon. A grey cloud bank was building, perhaps heralding an end to the sunny days he’d become accustomed to since arriving in England. He was in high spirits nonetheless because he was thinking about Jean. It was close to four o’clock on Friday afternoon, and within twenty-four hours he knew she’d be back in London. He was buzzing at the thought of speaking to her again, but on the inside he remained nervous about what she was going to say, and whether or not she wanted to see him again. As he approached the
Osprey
and tried to refocus his thoughts, he hoped those grey clouds were not an ill omen.

‘JT!’

Davina appeared on the deck of the
Osprey
and began waving at him, full of smiles and looking very nautical, Tayte thought, in a striped blue sweater and white jeans.

Tayte stepped aboard. ‘Looks like the weather’s set to change.’

‘I know. Still, we’ve had a good run.’ She extended a hand to steady Tayte aboard. ‘We might as well go straight below,’ she added. ‘It looks like rain. That weather front will be here before we know it.’

‘I think I just felt a spot,’ Tayte said as he ducked his head beneath the beam and followed Davina down the steps into the main cabin.

‘Have a seat,’ Davina said. ‘Did you manage to tell Inspector Bishop about that receipt I found?’

‘Yes I did. I called him right after you told me. He said he was going to talk to Dean Saxby again, to find out why he didn’t mention it.’

‘Good,’ Davina said. ‘What can I get you to drink? There’s a bottle of Rioja open if you’d like some. I’m afraid I don’t have any tea or coffee aboard.’

‘Do you have any soda?’

‘Can of Coke?’

‘Perfect.’

‘You don’t mind if I stick to wine, do you? I’ve already had
a glass.’

‘No, not at all,’ Tayte said as he opened his briefcase and found the notebook. He threw Davina a smile. ‘It’s your boat.’

Davina set their drinks down and sat beside him. ‘I can’t tell you how excited I’ve been since you called. Is that it?’ she added, eying the notebook as Tayte brought it into view and set it down on the table.

‘That’s it,’ Tayte said. ‘It’s quite unremarkable, as I said.’

‘It’s the contents that matter. People have died because of it—Phoebe Dodson and perhaps poor Lionel.’

Tayte picked up his drink and downed half of it in one go. He opened the notebook. ‘Let’s take a look then, shall we? Hopefully we can work out why.’ He went back into his briefcase and found the deciphered transcript, which he set down between them. ‘The contents of the notebook itself won’t mean much,’ he added. ‘This transcript, on the other hand, shows all the names and addresses. Do any of them mean anything to you?’

Davina looked through them, shaking her head between sips of wine.

‘Maybe they meant something to your husband?’ Tayte said.

Davina came to the last name and address and dismissed it. ‘It’s possible, but I don’t recognise any of them myself.’

‘That’s too bad. There doesn’t seem to be any commonality among them, either. No repeat names, and geographically they’re all over the place. I thought about looking to see if there was a family history connection between them. Maybe the census would tell us something about these people that’s not evident from their names and addresses alone.’

Tayte finished his drink and held the can up to get the last drop.

‘You were thirsty,’ Davina said. ‘Would you like another one?’

‘Thanks, but that’s my quota of sugary beverages for today.’

Davina just smiled and sipped her wine. ‘You said on the telephone that there was a section of code that hadn’t been deciphered.’

Tayte nodded and flicked to the back of the notebook. ‘Here it is. It’s mostly numbers, as I said.’

Davina studied them. ‘There are ten blocks,’ she said a moment later. ‘They all appear to be the same length.’

Tayte already knew as much. ‘These letters beside them have been deciphered, but the words they form appear to be random.’ He read a few out. ‘Fortissimo. Antelope. Wedgwood. The numeric code would probably make sense of them if it could be worked out, but as things stand, we’ve no way of knowing what it means.’

Davina looked up from the notebook, and she looked somewhat apologetic as she said, ‘Oh, I know what it means.’

‘You do? That’s great.’

‘Is it? I’m afraid you won’t think so when I tell you
how
I know.’

Tayte’s eyes narrowed on her. ‘How do you mean?’

Davina sighed and shifted along the seat, moving away from Tayte. ‘I suppose I do owe you an explanation,’ she said. ‘You’ve been very kind, and so helpful. When I first met you I thought you might prove too clever to fool, but thankfully I was wrong. I’ve had you fooled from the beginning—you and the police.’

Tayte’s brow set into a deep furrow. ‘So you were behind all this—the break-ins at your homes and everything else?’

‘Yes, I was. I thought the break-ins would help to draw suspicion away from me, and I wanted to let you and Inspector Bishop know that someone was looking for something. Clever, don’t you think?’

‘Wait a minute,’ Tayte said. ‘ So you killed your own husband?’

‘Not personally, no. I had a watertight alibi, remember? But yes, I was responsible. I wasn’t as close to Lionel as I might have led you and the police to believe.’

‘So you had someone else kill him? Was it Dean Saxby?’

Davina laughed to herself. ‘No, he had nothing to do with any of this. When I recalled his visit to the workshop, I thought he could make for another useful distraction to the Inspector’s investigation, but that’s all it was.’

‘Then who did kill your husband? Why?’

‘For this notebook, of course,’ Davina said, tapping it with a fingernail. ‘I’ve been leading you towards it all this time, dropping clues in your lap—the telegram and those photographs of Lionel’s. I planted them in his workshop for you to find, and I led you to believe it was your idea to go there to look for the notebook. I knew it wasn’t there, but I also knew that the document shown in those photographs would tell you where it was.’

‘So you knew where it was all along?’

‘Not to begin with, but we soon worked it out, or rather, Lionel did. Getting access to it was proving to be the difficult part.’

‘Which is where I came in,’ Tayte said, an air of defeat in his tone.

‘Your arrival was as manna from heaven to me,’ Davina said, smiling broadly. ‘At first I just wanted to stop you. I knew when and why you were coming to England from the messages you left on my husband’s answering machine, so I had someone look out for you at Hamberley, where it was obvious you would go. Then I had you run off the road. I thought if that didn’t seriously injure you, or even kill you, then you would at least get the message and back off. But I’m glad you proved to be the stubborn type.’

‘You still haven’t really told me why you had your husband killed or who did it.’

‘You’re not the patient type, though, are you?’ Davina drank some more of her wine, as though they were still two people enjoying a sociable afternoon together. ‘It’s really very simple. Lionel discovered that I was having an affair. We argued and he told me he had the notebook, saying that I wasn’t getting a penny. I believed him, so I set up his murder—to shut him up about the affair and to get the notebook for myself. But Lionel didn’t have the notebook, of course, so I devised my little plan to get it through you.’