The Bee's kiss

Chapter Twenty-Eight

‘Where are we going?’ Tilly asked excitedly, settling into the Oxford.

She was looking extraordinarily attractive, he noticed, and felt flattered that she had taken the trouble. Her outfit was of the very best, discreet but costly, he would have thought. A short, oyster-coloured silk dress, a row of pearls, a black cashmere wrap and an immaculately made-up face — did he deserve this?

‘Somewhere special,’ he said, threading his way through the streets of Mayfair.

Reaching their destination, he handed the keys to a commissionaire and held out an arm to Tilly.

‘The Ritz?’ she said wonderingly as she stepped out. He was pleased to hear the disappointment in her tone as she added, ‘You didn’t say we were still working, sir.’

‘Well, it may not be unadulterated pleasure, having dinner with the guv’nor,’ he smiled, ‘but it’s not work. I think I told you, and I say again, the Jagow-Joliffe case is closed. Done up in pink string and filed away from sight for the next seventy-five years. It seemed appropriate to wrap it all up here where it all started. And we’ll get a jolly good dinner. We’ve deserved it!’

He glanced approvingly at the reflection in the many glittering mirrors which flanked their progress to their table. He almost wished Cyril were on hand to record the occasion but he remembered that no camera flash journalists ever breached the defences of the Ritz. Probably all off in Hyde Park, anyway, busy snapping the militant aristocracy.

As they settled, he looked around, grateful that the management had been as good as its word and given him what he had asked for — a discreet table at some distance from the others.

In spite of Joe’s agitation the evening seemed to be going well. Tilly was calm, attentive, responsive and amusing. The perfect partner. Joe thought she would undoubtedly be granted Maisie’s seal of approval on this showing. Maisie’s? His own, too. For a desolate moment he was aware of a void in his life, a loneliness, and played with the thought of returning from such an evening with such a girl on his arm and no need to say goodnight. ‘Listening to too many popular songs,’ he decided. ‘Brace up, Sandilands!’

They chattered happily through three courses and Tilly looked relieved when Joe suggested to the waiter that they might like a pause before the desserts were presented. Now or never. Joe reached into his pocket and produced a white card. He watched Tilly’s face as he put it down in front of her.

Her eyes widened slightly and she stared at the photograph of the dreaming face. The familiar face. The family face. Silently she trailed a forefinger around the cut-out line of the photograph.

‘Thank you for your sensitivity, Joe. How like you to have censored the rest of the. . unpleasantness. It must have been. . unpleasant.’

‘Can you confirm that this is Marianne? Your older sister?’

‘Of course. But there were others. What have you done with them?’

‘I have them safe and they’ve been doctored in the same way. I was going to reassure the subjects that all danger has passed from them but. .’ He paused and held her gaze. ‘I can’t do that until the negatives are in my possession or, at the very least, I am confident that they have been destroyed.’

‘They have been destroyed, Joe.’

He waited, willing her to go on.

‘They were handed over to me and I put the evil things on the fire,’ she said finally. ‘They made a fine blaze.’

‘I’d be interested to know how they made their way into your hands?’

‘I’m sure you would. “Still ferreting,” Bill would say.’ She smiled. ‘When they give you a knighthood you can have it for your motto. You must let me devise your coat-of-arms.’

Joe grinned. ‘What do you see? A ferret rampant gardant and above, a scroll saying semper vigilans?’

‘Something like that. Well, Mr Ferret, the negatives were brought to London by that scheming Audrey. She was intent on raising money to finance an idle future by selling them to me for whatever she could get.’

‘I think Audrey had something even more valuable to sell to you,’ suggested Joe.

Tilly smiled as though acknowledging an opponent’s clever chess move. ‘My life or liberty, you mean? Yes, that. She recognized me the moment I took off my hat at King’s Hanger. Though I didn’t register her as anything other than a maid, she saw me going into the Dame’s room. As she said, she was interested to catch a sight of Bea’s latest conquest! She lurked about and watched me come out later. . much later. . and go down in the lift.’

‘And your presence could perhaps have been explained away when she realized you were a policewoman. . had it not been for one extraordinary fact.’

Tilly nodded and looked down at her plate.

‘You went into the Dame’s room wearing a black lace dress and black gloves and emerged in a silver-grey dress — a bit long for you and hitched up at the hips with a silver belt — and a pair of spanking clean white gloves. Perhaps Audrey even recognized the dress — it was one of her mistress’s best. She had been planning to wear it at the Savoy the next night.’

‘When we interviewed Audrey she managed to make it quite clear that she understood what had gone on and I made the opportunity to speak to her alone.’

‘Ah, yes. While I was dispatched to admire the tulips.’

‘I agreed to whatever she suggested. I told Bill. .’

‘I conveniently sent you both off into the orchard to compare notes,’ sighed Joe. ‘You told him everything, didn’t you? About the Dame and her treacherous intentions. . the Hive. . Donovan. . the lot!’

‘I confided in Bill, yes. I was very sure I could trust him.’

‘Your trust was well founded. He protected you well. And I think you persuaded him to deal with Audrey?’

‘Yes. He rang her when we got back. He. .’ she hesitated, ‘dealt with everything and handed me the negatives afterwards.’

‘Don’t be so mealy-mouthed, Constable!’ Joe’s voice hardened. ‘He lured her to Waterloo Bridge, grabbed her bag and threw her into a cold, dark, fast-flowing, filthy river where she drowned. You made use of Armitage.’

Tilly breathed deeply. ‘You’ve worked it out, Joe. You know perfectly well we used each other. Had to! Had to!’

‘It must have been quite a stand-off, the two of you facing each other over the Dame’s dead body — or was she still in her death throes?’

‘Death throes, I think,’ said Tilly, unperturbed. ‘I was determined to have it out with her. She’d killed my sister with her foul corruption and blackmail! We all thought Marianne was grieving still for our mother but she didn’t get over it. She got worse in fact. Depression, flashes of temper, strained silences. We couldn’t understand what was wrong with her. One day I found her dead in her bed. An overdose. Looking very much as she does here,’ she said, gently touching the photograph on the table.

‘She’d left a letter for us. Explaining all. Father was beside himself with rage and grief. I had to stop him from rushing out with his gun. No, there are better ways, I told him. More people involved than us: the other victims, the country itself. It needed our discretion. We decided to take it to the very top. And I think they listened to Father. But we waited and waited and nothing seemed to happen. I suppose they were investigating her. Then it became evident that they were taking the easy way out. The creature was going to be allowed to get away with a rap on the knuckles and an early, discreet retreat from public life.

‘I hadn’t intended to kill her. I’m sure I hadn’t. I didn’t take a gun or a knife or a dose of cyanide with me. I meant to confront her with her crimes. I’d seen her making eyes at Joanna and I thought, “Oh, Lord! She’s not given up! It goes on!” I had a quiet word with Joanna in the powder room and advised her to leave there and then. She was bored out of her brains by that stage and very pleased to take my advice.’

‘So, you went up in the lift after all — in your black dress, you did not, at that stage, answer the description the lift boy was given — if indeed Armitage bothered to ask him. . I have long ago discounted any evidence provided by the sergeant. I expect the Dame was very surprised to see you instead of her chosen prey when you walked in through the open door a minute or two after she let herself in.’

‘She was furious, in fact, with me for interfering! I told her who I was, which made her even angrier. I informed her that my sister had confided everything before she killed herself. I told her that she was under surveillance and her days were numbered. Any naval man she encountered was silently observing her, despising her for the traitor she was. I laid it on thick! An avenging angel, you’d have said. I wanted to see her squirm. She went quite mad. She’s. . was. . a frightening woman when she was angry. You saw on her dead face the faintest echo of what she was capable of. Well, I’d over-steered. She picked up the poker and hit out at me. I dodged and she tried again. I dashed about the room, fearing for my life. She cornered me over by the fireplace. I was so desperate by then I wrenched the poker from her. . I’m stronger than I look, sir, and I’ve got used to tackling reprobates.’

Joe nodded. ‘Seen you in action, Westhorpe. And then?’ Urging her on towards the hardest part of the confession.

‘I hit her on the head. I thought I’d just stun her. But once wasn’t enough! She wouldn’t die! I had to keep hitting her. The blood splashed everywhere. I never heard Armitage climb in until he shouted in his police voice, “Put down that weapon, miss!” Well, I stood for a while pulling myself together. I was covered in blood by then and she was moaning and dying on the floor. But my senses were unbelievably sharp, sir,’ she added wonderingly. ‘At a moment like that, people in books — and in the dock! — say, “I was confused, mad, didn’t know what I was doing, out of my senses.” It’s not like that. I was very much in my senses. Seeing everything with perfect clarity. I looked at Armitage. He had a nice face. Looked dreadfully concerned.’ She smiled. ‘But I did wonder what he was doing up on the roof at that time of night, climbing in through a window, and I guessed.

‘He took off his glove and put a finger to her neck to check for life. “She’s a gonner,” he said. I solemnly surrendered my weapon. I handed him the poker, sticky end first, and he took it automatically, then, realizing what he’d done, he dropped it as though it were white hot. I grabbed it and threw it through the window. We heard it clanging down over two floors. Impossible to find it in the dark.

‘Well, a face to face snarling match ensued! I told him I was a policewoman and a friend of the dead woman. I knew him to be a thief and I’d call the police and tell them I’d found him standing over the body in the act of stealing her emeralds when I’d come up to her room. I’d tell them he’d thrown the poker out of the window and there’d be bound to be a fingerprint on it to clinch my story.’

Joe’s face was a stony mask of disgust.

‘So, thief and murderer, you stood quarrelling over the body and plotted your way out of it.’

‘Yes. He’s very clever, you know, your sergeant. It was his idea that I should get out of my black dress and gloves, tidy up in the bathroom and slip into the Dame’s reserve evening dress. He put my bloodstained things away in his pocket — a trade-off for the poker. I had something on him and he had something on me. Then we planned what we would say and do.’

‘You laid a trail of utter confusion and misdirection for the wretched investigating officer they sent to clear up the mess.’

‘We were unlucky it was you they sent. Father made a few calls and got it all diverted. I was allowed to stay on the case, close to you, to see what you were up to. Make sure you didn’t arrest any unfortunate innocent party. Keep you spinning in circles. Pity you didn’t obey orders. You exasperated some important people.’

‘But you were lucky with your timing, Tilly — you and Armitage. With the strike looming, the merest whisper of the Dame’s treachery would have been disastrous for the government. They could foresee the propaganda value to the opposition. Can you imagine what the socialists, to say nothing of the communists, could have made of such a scandal? A country that can be betrayed to a past and possibly future enemy by one of its ruling classes — its military aristocracy if you like — a woman honoured as a Dame of the British Empire, is a country that needs a radical overhaul. First Sir Roger and now Dame Beatrice. It seems our lords and masters aren’t fit to rule over us, as we’ve long suspected. Time, surely, to sharpen the guillotine? Time for our own People’s Revolution? First France, then Russia. . now it’s our turn. No wonder the rug was pulled out from under my feet.’

‘The country’s much better off without her, Joe.’ She reached across and touched his hand. Joe tried not to flinch.

‘Will you be able to cut that albatross loose now?’

‘Two. There was Audrey as well,’ he sullenly reminded her.

‘What will you do now?’

‘Carry on as though nothing happened, I suppose. A wiser man. A less trusting man. What will you do, Tilly?’ he asked carefully, knowing she would not betray her last secret. And, after all, it was none of his business what she did with the rest of her life. He would forget her bright, deceitful face in time. He thought it might take his sergeant a little longer, his sergeant who had so carefully kept her dress, not, as he had at first supposed, as insurance against treachery, but as something much more intimate. Poor old Armitage! He could almost feel sorry for him.

‘It’s all been a bit of a strain, this last bit, Joe. Perhaps police work isn’t for me, after all. I’m resigning my post. I’m going to spend some time away from London.’

‘Going anywhere interesting?’ he asked conversationally.

‘Oh, yes. You’d be very surprised to hear!’

Inspector Cottingham wobbled into Queen Adelaide Court later that week on his bicycle. The streets were littered with burned-out buses and the carcases of strike-breaking vehicles of one sort or another and two wheels were the most reliable way of getting about the seething capital.

He knocked on the closed door of ‘Violet Villa’. He’d come on an errand of mercy. If, as Joe and he supposed, Armitage was fleeing the country, even now checking into his first class cabin, the old man was going to be feeling somewhat let down. Cottingham was going to offer to escort him to his appointment up west in Harley Street, if indeed such an appointment existed. The twenty-fourth of May, he’d mentioned. The very least they could do was check that suitable arrangements had been made, Sandilands had said.

He banged again and called, ‘Mr Armitage!’

‘Yer won’t get no answer terday,’ said the pram-pushing escort who’d crowded round him the moment he entered the court.

‘No? Why not?’

‘’Aven’t you ’eard? ’E’s gorn orf. Both of ’em. They’ve gorn west. All the way to America!’

‘West? Ah, yes,’ mumbled Cottingham. ‘Seems a long way to go for an eye operation but I suppose they have good surgeons in New York. Devious old devil! Like son, like father, I suppose!’

‘Wot you on about, mister? ’Ere — you’re the one as fancies cats, int yer?’

She delved into the mass of cushions and blankets in her box pram and produced a cat. The cat. ‘Left ’im behind. Auntie Bella can’t stand cats. Don’t suppose you’d take ’im off our ’ands? Let yer ’ave ’im for a bob!’

Cottingham sighed. ‘Well, I suppose we ginger-nuts must stick together. .’

Rehearsing a speech for his wife, Cottingham tucked the cat into the basket of his bicycle and pedalled back up west.