The Mammoth Book Of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits Part 24

"But I think you're being 'framed,' as the Americans say. Giles he's police too, isn't he?"

"MI5, actually."

"Similar, then. The case against you is that Sir Reginald I think we should refer to him as Mr Lloyd, don't you? Only crooks get knighthoods anyway Lloyd obviously knew you from somewhere. He mentioned it to a couple of people, but you didn't say anything about it."

"I was on duty at a Mansion House banquet a few months ago. Lloyd got drunk, and I had to see him home."

"So the idea is you killed him to prevent him blowing your cover. Then of course, it was you who didn't want to call the local police "

"No it wasn't it was Giles!"

"Everyone says it was you. But . . ."

"But?"

She grinned at him, and made a show of looking around for eavesdroppers. There was a large dragonfly in the vicinity, but it paid them little notice. "But I know why you didn't want to call the police. I've worked it out. I've read the signs, Comrade Norbert."

"Do you?" He lit two cigarettes. After a moment he remembered that one of them was for her, and pa.s.sed it over. "Have you?"

"You didn't want to give the press ammunition for a new scare: 'Bolsheviks Run Amok In Country House Bloodbath.' Did you? You hoped you could sort it all out nice and quietly on your own."

"I'm not sure quite "

"Anyway, there were a few other things, which I won't bore you with they're all obvious enough if you think back. The point is, why would MI5 want to frame you?"

"Well, yes." He coughed, and threw his cigarette away. "That is where the whole thing falls down, isn't it?"

She hugged herself, and drew on her cigarette as if it were a gla.s.s of barley water. "I worked that out, too. Equally obvious, once you think about it. You're not only a police spy, are you, but also "

"What do you know about that?" He sat down. He hadn't realised he'd stood up, and he felt a bit of a chump about it, now.

"It was you so obviously knowing Giles that set me thinking."

"Oh. Was it obvious? I thought I handled that quite smartly."

"Well, you refrained from hanging a painted sign around your neck, saying 'I have known and hated Giles Macready for several years in a professional capacity,' so I suppose you deserve credit for that."

"Thank you."

"But the first time you met him, supposedly, you already knew he didn't smoke."

"Oh, b.u.g.g.e.r," said Norbert. "Pardon me."

"I expect it's true that he knows you from the Police Strike of 1919; but you were on opposite sides then, weren't you? You were with the strikers. And you're still on opposite sides today. Aren't you?"

Norbert's instructions on this matter were perfectly plain: admit nothing, ever. Those who trained him probably hadn't envisaged his being interrogated on a July riverbank by a young female typist from a Tube-station town.

"I imagine you were approached by Special Branch after the failure of the strike, and given the choice of dismissal and blacklisting, like so many of your comrades, or of turning your coat. And when you reported that approach to the CPGB, they urged you to go along with it. You are the Party's man amongst the political police. I wonder whether it was the Party or the Yard who first suggested you come and spy on us?"

He thought he'd better say something, just so she wouldn't think he was dead. "Macready asked me the same thing. I didn't give him an answer, either."

"You must have worked very hard to get Special Branch to trust you. I can only guess at the price you and, no doubt, the Party have paid for that trust. But Giles never quite trusted you, did he?"

How odd, Norbert was thinking: the life he led, and yet this long-haired girl who lived with her mum and dad was twice as cynical, twice as matter-of-fact about the world's machinations, as he could ever be. The conclusion she was implying was one that had never occurred to him. "You think Giles killed Lloyd in order to incriminate me?"

"It makes sense, doesn't it? Perhaps he's working on his own, or perhaps he managed to convince MI5 that you were a communist spy."

"Then why not simply arrest me? Or kill me?"

Her hand gripped his wrist. She didn't seem to know she was doing it, so Norbert thought he wouldn't mention it. "Because this way they get rid of you, and they get a wonderful red bogey story as a bonus."

"They usually just make up their red bogeys. Or commission the good old Daily Mail to do it for them."

"But nothing as good as this one a communist spy in the police, murdering a defenceless knight of the realm."

Yes, thought, Norbert; and they'd humiliate their despised cousins in Special Branch at the same time. One should never underestimate the contempt which existed between those two organs of the state, or the outrageous lengths which members of each outfit would go to in order to damage the other. Susan's theory wasn't impossible. There again, neither was this . . .

"Your workings out have certainly been most productive, Comrade Susan. I wonder if you can apply the same logic to help me answer another question."

She removed her hand, perhaps seeing from his expression that there was no point in all that, now. "I'll try," she said.

"What do you suppose Lloyd was doing in the Vitality Room in the first place? Does he seem to you the type to take an interest in exercise machines before breakfast?"

"Curiosity, I suppose."

"Initially, perhaps. He heard the noise of one of Lady Boggy's machines, wondered what it was, went to have a nose. But having seen that it was merely that young show-off pilot fellow doing some boring exercises, I'm quite sure Sir Reginald's thoughts would have returned immediately to sausage and kedgeree and black pudding. Unless . . ."

"Yes," she said, and he couldn't quite tell from her lack of inflection whether the word was a question or a statement.

"Something must have lured him in there. Now, what would persuade him to set foot in the room, let alone to step up onto that strange machine? Only a woman, surely? Only a pretty, young woman."

"Yes," she said, and this time her meaning was apparent.

"Just as a matter of interest, where did you learn to fly?" Norbert asked Giles, thinking that life in Intelligence was very different to life in the Branch, where flying lessons were, to put it mildly, not standard issue.

"Fly? Oh, a couple of my pals have their own planes, it's something I mess about with now and then at weekends. I never was much good at croquet, you know, or crosswords."

Of course. A couple of pals. Naturally. "Giles," said Norbert, "I'm thinking of arresting you for the murder of Sir Reginald Lloyd."

"I see. Although, of course, you must know by now that I didn't do it?"

"I don't know who did it, but I'm not sure it matters. I'm confident I can make a convincing case against you." To which, he hoped, MI5 would respond with a thorough whitewash. The whole business would be entombed, and forgotten.

Giles made a sympathetic face. "Wouldn't work, I'm afraid."

Earlier, under the chestnut tree, Susan had told Norbert: "I didn't lure him." Clearly this was a matter about which she felt strongly. "Don't say that, please, you make me sound awful."

"I'm sorry," Norbert had replied. "I withdraw the word."

She'd been trying out the equipment, that's all. How could she resist? And one of the slimming machines was having a . . . certain effect on her. Vitalism, you know. Sir Reginald Lloyd watched her from the doorway, watched her a while without announcing himself, which was a filthy thing to do, wasn't it? And then when he did speak, and approach, it was evident that he misinterpreted her shortness of breath, her flushed neck. He repeated his advances of the previous night, more forcefully this time, and she suddenly saw an opportunity not to protest and plead with yet another unwelcome man, but for once to teach a lesson.

He was easily persuaded onto the machine; she convinced him of its delights. She didn't intend him real harm: she was going to give him a bit of a shock, make a fool of him, leave him to extricate himself or scream the house down, as he preferred. But the moment she pushed the dosage switch to maximum Lloyd died. He gurgled, twitched, thrashed, moaned and died. It took, perhaps, five seconds. Maybe the machine was faulty; maybe the industrialist was.

Susan was horrified, naturally. Of course. But when you think about it, one day soon they're all going to be dead, aren't they? Every rich man, every exploiter, every capitalist. Did it really matter that Lloyd got his reward a few months early? So Susan had a bath, and then went down to breakfast.

And now, here they were; the policeman and the intelligence officer, discussing motives and the absence thereof.

"Wouldn't work," said Giles. "My lot know I wouldn't kill Lloyd to stop him giving his money to the dear old League of Urgency, because you see "

"Because the dear old League of Urgency is your creation. Right?"

"Well done. Knew you'd get there in the end."

And that was b.l.o.o.d.y annoying, because Norbert had known for a while that Giles had no motive for sabotaging the League; but he couldn't say so now without appearing childish. "I'm sure Boggy's lot aren't your only unwitting useful idiots. I daresay you're preparing all manner of phantom Bolshevist conspiracies. You intend the first Labour government to be the last, don't you?"

"Dead set on it," said Giles. "This is, my dear Sergeant Whistler, a time for the choosing of sides."

For weeks there had been rumours he'd heard them at the Yard and in the Party that a ma.s.s arrest of Communist Party leaders was imminent. One way or another, Norbert's double life was nearly over. He wondered if they needed detectives in Moscow. "This murder is a reverse for you, isn't it?"

Giles spread his hands. "A hiccup."

Norbert tried to keep his face from showing what he was thinking, which was, essentially, "How can I resolve this in such a way as to keep Susan Chaplin from harm because no-one deserves to hang for what she did and keep me from harm, and land b.l.o.o.d.y Giles in it?"

He went off for a walk around the fishpond to sharpen his appet.i.te. As he left the room, Giles called after him: "There are many ways of slitting one's own throat, Sergeant, but I'm sure you'll do the right thing."

"Don't worry," said Norbert. "I will." Halfway through his walk, having abandoned his search for the answer, the correct question occurred to him: what did Giles want him to do? Keep the killing quiet. Write it up as a mundane accident, or better still a heart attack in the bath. And, since that would broadly serve Norbert's immediate interests as well, that was what Giles expected him to do.

Which made the whole thing much simpler.

Giles was asleep when his aeroplane was stolen. Comrade Boggy wasn't, he very much suspected, but he couldn't prove it. He didn't hear it take off, because it was first towed to a field at the other end of the estate by a team of horses.

As luck would have it luck, or information received it was officers from the Special Branch who discovered Sir Reginald Lloyd's corpse in the pilot's seat of the aircraft, upon their arrival at Croydon Aerodrome the following day. They didn't openly disbelieve Giles's account of Sir Reginald's death, but when the rest of Lord Bognor's guests were unable to recall the industrialist's presence at the house, there seemed little point in pursuing the matter.

His reputation and career stained to a degree which was downright embarra.s.sing, Giles Macready would very much have liked to discuss the affair, robustly and frankly, with Detective Sergeant Norbert Whistler. This desire was something on which, uniquely, Giles and the Special Branch reached early accord; but by then, Comrade Norbert was thousands of miles away. In a hot country, as it happened, on a roof, taking the sun and looking to the future.

Bullets PETER LOVESEY.

Peter Lovesey has produced an interesting range of historical mystery novels. His first and perhaps still best known are those featuring the Victorian police detective Sergeant Cribb, starting with Wobble to Death (1970). Equally popular are his novels featuring Bertie, Prince of Wales (and future King Edward VII) as a sleuth, starting with Bertie and the Tin Man (1987). His others include a 1920s mystery, The False Inspector Dew (1982), set on a translatlantic liner and which won him the Crime Writers a.s.sociation's Gold Dagger Award as that year's best novel. For the following story Peter turns to the craze for magazine compet.i.tions and mottos, which reached new heights in the twenties the first crossword puzzle to appear in Britain was in Pearson's Magazine in February 1922.

"You can remove the body."

"Was it definitely . . . ?"

"Suicide, I'd stake my life on it," said Inspector Carew, a forceful man. "Single bullet to the head. Gun beside him. Ex-army fellow who didn't return his weapon when the war ended. This must be the third or fourth case I've seen. The world has changed too much for them the wireless, a Labour Government, the bright young things. All these poor fellows have got is their memories of the war, and who wants to think about that?"

"He didn't leave a note."

"Are you questioning my conclusion?"

"Absolutely not, Inspector."

"I suggest you get on with your job, then. I'm going to speak to the family."

The family consisted of the dead man's widow, Emily Flanagan, a pretty, dark-haired woman not much over thirty; and her father, whose name was Russell. They were sitting at the kitchen table in 7, Albert Street, their small suburban house in Teddington. They had a bottle of brandy between them.

The inspector accepted a drink and knocked it back in one swig. When talking to the recently bereaved he needed all the lubrication he could get. He gave them his findings and explained that there would need to be a post mortem to confirm the cause, obvious as it was. "You didn't find a note, I suppose?" he said.

Emily Flanagan shook her head.

"Did anything occur that could have induced him to take his own life? Bad news? An argument?"

Mrs Flanagan looked across at her father.

"No argument," the old man said. "And that's beyond dispute."

Mrs Flanagan clapped her hands twice and said, "Good one, Daddy."

Inspector Carew didn't follow what was going on, except that these two seemed more cheerful than they should.

"As a matter of fact," Mrs Flanagan said, "Patrick was in a better mood than I've seen him for some time." The ends of her mouth turned up in what wasn't quite a smile, more a comment on the vagary of fate.

"This was last night?"

"And for some days. He was singing Horsey, Keep Your Tail Up in the bathroom."

"Bracing himself?" said the inspector. His theory of depression was looking shaky.

"What do you mean, 'bracing himself'?"

"For the, em . . ."

"Felo de se," said old Mr Russell. "Felo de se fellow's sad day."

"Daddy, please," said Mrs Flanagan.

The inspector decided that the old man had drunk too much brandy. This wasn't a comfortable place to be. As soon as he'd got the essential details he was leaving. "I understand you were both woken by the shot."

"About midnight, yes," the widow said, glancing at her fingernails. She was holding up remarkably.

"You came downstairs and found him in his office?"

She nodded. "He called it his den. And Father came in soon after."

"He'd given no indication of taking his own life?"

"He liked his own life, Inspector."

"What was his work?"