An Expert in Murder Read online

  An Expert in Murder

  Nicola Upson

  An Expert in Murder

  A New Mystery

  Featuring Josephine Tey

  nicola upson

  To Phyllis and to Irene, for their wisdom and belief, with love from us both

  Contents

  One

  Had she been superstitious, Josephine Tey might have realised the…

  3

  Two

  Detective Inspector Archie Penrose could never travel in the King’s… 17

  Three

  When Josephine awoke next morning, it had just gone nine…

  31

  Four

  It was turning into the sort of day that made…

  49

  Five

  Penrose sat at his desk on the third floor of…

  71

  Six

  Josephine was already waiting on the pavement when Penrose’s car… 79

  Seven

  Theatre is a self-obsessed medium at the best of times…

  95

  Eight

  The telephone on the dark oak desk in Bernard Aubrey’s…

  105

  Nine

  Penrose had not intended to use his ticket for the…

  123

  Ten

  Bernard Aubrey’s body lay just inside his office and Penrose…

  137

  Eleven

  Penrose stood at the door to the Green Room, and…

  155

  Twelve

  The early hours of Sunday morning brought nothing but despair…

  185

  Thirteen

  As Penrose left the interview room and walked out to…

  203

  Fourteen

  Peace was an infrequent visitor to 66 St Martin’s Lane…

  231

  Fifteen

  Even late on a Sunday afternoon, Longacre seemed too narrow…

  249

  Sixteen

  In the early hours of Monday morning, St Martin’s Lane…

  275

  Author’s Note 289

  Acknowledgements 291

  About the Author

  Credits

  Cover

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Night was falling when at last he sat down, ready to write.

  Looking out over the garden, he watched as the louring, grey skies were replaced – inch by inch – with a blackness that wrapped itself like a shroud around the bushes at the limits of his view. Winter had played its customary trick, weaving the landscape together in a cloth of muted colours and bringing a spent uniformity to all he could see. The cold had deadened the richness of the world. In the morning, there would be a covering of frost on the window ledge.

  Impatient now to hand over his past, he poured the last inch of warmth from the whisky bottle on the desk and drained his glass before reaching for a sheet of notepaper. It was, he thought with satisfaction, an original sort of bequest. As if in deference to the significance of the moment, the house – usually so alive with faint but familiar sounds – fell silent as he picked up the slim, brown volume that lay on the table in front of him. He flicked through its pages until he came to the section he wished to use; the phrase had always struck him as peculiarly apt, and never more so than now.

  With a bitter smile, which came half from regret and half from resignation, he picked up the pen and began, his lips forming the words in perfect unison with the ink on the page. ‘To become an expert in murder’, he wrote, ‘cannot be so difficult.’

  1

  One

  Had she been superstitious, Josephine Tey might have realised the odds were against her when she found that her train, the early-morning express from the Highlands, was running an hour and a half late. At six o’clock, when she walked down the steps to the south-bound platform, she expected to find the air of excitement which always accompanies the muddled loading of people and suitcases onto a departing train. Instead, she was met by a testa-ment to the long wait ahead: the carriages were in darkness; the engine itself gravely silent; and a mountain of luggage built steadily along the cold, grey strand of platform. But like most people of her generation, who had lived through war and loss, Josephine had acquired a sense of perspective, and the train’s mechanical failure foretold nothing more sinister to her than a tiresome wait in the station’s buffet. In fact, although this was the day of the first murder, nothing would disturb her peace of mind until the following morning.

  By the time she had drained three cups of bland coffee, the train appeared to be ready for its journey. She left the buffet’s crowded warmth and prepared to board, stopping on the way to buy a copy of yesterday’s Times and a bar of Fry’s chocolate from the small news kiosk next to the platform. As she took her seat, she could not help but feel a rush of excitement in spite of the delay: in a matter of hours, she would be in London.

  The ornate station clock declared that it was a quarter past eight when the train finally left the mouth of the station and moved slowly out into the countryside. Josephine settled back into her seat and allowed the gentle thrum of the wheels to soothe away 3

  any lingering frustrations of the morning. Removing her gloves and taking out a handkerchief, she cleared a small port-hole in the misted window and watched as the strengthening light took some of the tiredness from the cold March day. On the whole, winter had been kind. There had, thank God, been no repeat of the snow wreaths and roaring winds which had brought the Highland railway to a sudden standstill the year before, leaving her and many others stranded in waiting rooms overnight. Engines with snow ploughs attached had been sent to force a passage through, and she would never forget the sight of them charging the drifts at full speed, shooting huge blocks of snow forty feet into the air.

  Shivering at the memory of it, she unfolded her newspaper and turned to the review pages, where she was surprised to find that the Crime Book Society’s selection was ‘a hair-raising yarn’ called Mr Munt Carries On. They couldn’t have read the book, she thought, since she had tried it herself and considered Mr Munt to have carried on for far too long to be worth seven and six of anybody’s money. When she arrived at the theatre section, which she had purposely saved until last, she smiled to herself at the news that Richard of Bordeaux – her own play and now London’s longest run – was about to enter its final week.

  As the train moved south, effortlessly eating into four hundred miles or so of open fields and closed communities, she noticed that spring had come early to England – as quick to grace the gentle countryside as it had been to enhance the drama of the hills against a Highland sky. There was something very precious about the way that rail travel allowed you to see the landscape, she thought. It had an expansiveness about it that the close confinement of a motor car simply could not match and she had loved it since, as a young woman, she had spent her holidays travelling every inch of the single-track line that shadowed the turf from Inverness to Tain.

  Even now, more than twenty years later, she could never leave Scotland by train without remembering the summer of her seven-teenth birthday, when she and her lover – in defiance of the terrible weather – had explored the Highlands by rail, taking a different route from Daviot Station every morning. When war broke out, a 4

  year later almost to the day, the world changed forever but – for her at least – that particular bond to a different age had stayed the same, and perhaps always would.

  This link with the past was becoming harder to hold on to, though, as she found herself unexpectedly in the public eye. She had had thirteen months and four hundred and sixty performances to get used to being the author of the most popular play in London, but fame still taste
d strange to her. Richard of Bordeaux had brought success, but success brought a relinquishing of privacy which, though necessary, was not easily or willingly given.

  Every time she journeyed south, she felt torn between the celebrity that awaited her in London and the ties which kept her in Inverness – and knew she was not truly comfortable with either.

  But during the miles in between, for a few precious hours, she could still remember how it had felt to be seventeen and sure of what you wanted.

  Today, though, anonymity vanished even earlier than expected when a pleasant-looking young woman boarded the train at Berwick-upon-Tweed and slid back the door to Josephine’s carriage. She struggled apologetically with her luggage, but a gentleman quickly stood to help her wrestle a large, beautifully embroidered travelling bag into the overhead luggage rack, and she smiled gratefully at him when he offered up his window seat. As the girl settled herself in, Josephine gazed at her in fascination, but it was not so much her features that drew attention as the remarkable hat that framed them – a cloche, made of fine black straw, which was accentuated on one side by a curled white ostrich feather, flecked with beige and brown and attached by a long, black-tipped hatpin. It was hardly the sort of thing that Josephine would ever wear herself, and it made her own plain velvet seem bland in comparison, but she admired its delicate beauty nonetheless.

  The young woman nodded brightly at her and Josephine returned to her paper but, as she scanned the racing pages, she was uncomfortably conscious of being watched. When she looked up, the girl turned hurriedly back to her magazine, acutely embarrassed at having been caught, and began to study its pages with 5

  exaggerated interest. Aware that the journey would be more relaxed for both of them if she smoothed the moment over, Josephine broke the ice. ‘You know, I often think that for all the nonsense these racing pundits talk, I could get a job doing it myself,’ she said.

  The girl laughed, delighted to have a chance at conversation. ‘As long as it doesn’t take you away from the stage,’ she replied, and –

  as she noticed Josephine’s surprise – looked aghast at her own familiarity. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ she continued, ‘and I really don’t want to be a nuisance, but I’ve just got to say something. It is you, isn’t it? I recognised you straight away from that lovely art-icle. What a wonderful coincidence!’

  Josephine forced a smile and quietly cursed the publicity photograph that had appeared in one of the more obscure theatrical journals, confirming to its handful of readers that Gordon Daviot

  – the name she wrote under – was certainly not hers by birth.

  ‘How observant of you,’ she said, embarrassed to see that the other occupants of the carriage were taking a new interest in their travelling companion. ‘That came out a year ago – I’m surprised you remember it.’

  ‘That’s the coincidence – I read it again just the other day when I found out I was coming down to see Richard in its final week, and I’ve got it with me now.’ She pointed towards her bag as proof of the happy accident. ‘Listen, I hope you won’t think I’m just saying this because it’s you, but I do love that play. I’ve been so many times already and I will miss it when it’s gone.’ She paused, absent-mindedly curling a lock of brown hair round her finger as she looked out of the window. ‘I suppose most people would think it silly to get as engrossed in theatre as I do, or to put such value on stories that other people make up, but for me it’s much more than a play.’ She looked back at Josephine. ‘I shouldn’t be talking to you like this when we’ve only just met and you want to read your paper, but I must thank you now I’ve got the chance. My father died last year, and it’s all been so miserable for my mother and me, and sometimes your play got me through. It was the only thing I could lose myself in.’

  6

  Touched, Josephine folded away her newspaper. ‘It’s not silly,’

  she said. ‘If you took any notice of people who think it is, there’d be no pleasure in the world. I’m sorry to hear about your father, though. Was his death very sudden?’

  ‘Oh no, he’d been ill for a long time. He was in the army, you see, and he never recovered from the war.’ She smiled ruefully.

  ‘And sometimes I think my mother will never recover from my father. She was devastated when we lost him – we both were – but she’s been better lately. And we work together, so at least I’ve been able to keep an eye on her.’

  ‘What do you do?’ Josephine asked, genuinely curious.

  The girl raised her eyes, and this time her smile was warm and conspiratorial. ‘Can’t you guess? We’re in hats.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’m Elspeth, by the way. Elspeth Simmons.’

  ‘Call me Josephine. It’s beautiful, you know – your hat.’ Elspeth blushed and started to protest, but Josephine interrupted her. ‘No, honestly – if I’ve got to sit here and take compliments, then you must have your share. You’ve got a real talent – it must run in the family.’

  ‘Perhaps, but I wouldn’t really know – I’m adopted, you see,’

  Elspeth explained candidly. ‘They took me on when I was a baby.

  You’re right – my adoptive mother taught me everything, but we’re not very much alike, although we get on tremendously well.

  All this play business drives her up the wall – she hates the theatre, apart from a bit of variety at Christmas, so I usually go with my uncle. When I tell her how pleased I am to have met you, she probably won’t even know what I’m talking about. Still,’ she added, a little wistfully, ‘I like to think my original parents had some theatrical blood in them somewhere.’

  Looking again at the memorable hat, Josephine guessed that Elspeth’s adoptive mother was not without her own sense of the dramatic. Although by now the girl had lost much of her initial shyness and was talking eagerly about the theatre, Josephine could not resent the loss of her cherished peace and quiet. Rather, she felt a growing admiration for Elspeth’s spirit and lack of self-pity. Her conversation did not entirely mask the series of tough 7

  blows that life had dealt her: abandoned as a baby, then claimed again only to have her second chance at happiness destroyed by a conflict which she was of no age to understand – if such an age existed. Thousands like Elspeth there might have been, but the sharing of tragedy – even on such a scale – did not make the personal cost any easier to bear for each individual it touched.

  Josephine knew that as well as anyone. Twenty years after it started, the war had reinvented its suffering for a second generation in the form of inescapable confinement with the sick and wounded, and an eventual loss whose pain was the more sharply felt for its delay. After her father’s long illness, then his death, who could blame Elspeth for taking refuge in the less demanding emotions of the stage, or for contemplating another, more glamorous, identity? It was not so different to what she herself had done and – in the face of her own father’s fragile health – what she continued to do.

  ‘I hope you won’t think it rude of me to ask,’ Elspeth continued,

  ‘but will you be sad when your play ends?’

  Josephine had asked herself the same thing when she saw the press notice earlier. The answer had not required much soul-searching, although it would have been churlish to show the true extent of her relief. ‘No, not really,’ she said. ‘It’s going on tour, after all, and it’s lovely to think that people all over the country will see it. I do have another play or two on the go, and my publisher wants a second mystery story at some point, so there’s plenty to keep me busy.’ She did not admit it to Elspeth, but there was another reason why her heart was no longer in the play that had made her name: that business last year with Elliott Vintner had soured the whole experience for her. The voice of reason inside her head told her time and time again that she was not to blame for the court case or its repercussions, but the thought that a man had taken his own life because of her success filled her with a coldness that no amount of rational argument could eradicate.

  Fort
unately, before Josephine could go further down that road, a restaurant attendant passed through the carriages to announce the next sitting for lunch. ‘Let’s go and have something to eat,’ she 8

  suggested to Elspeth, conscious that the young woman’s enthusiasm for her work was beginning to wear a little thin with everyone else in the compartment. ‘It’s been a long morning.’

  The train’s delay had created a healthy appetite in its passengers.

  The dining car was almost full when they arrived, but a waiter showed them to the last vacant table. ‘Gosh – how lovely,’ said Elspeth, looking round at the bronze lamps, plush carpets and walnut veneer panelling, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever eaten anywhere as luxurious as this before.’ She removed her hat, then looked round anxiously for somewhere to put it before the waiter came to her rescue and took it from her with a wink. ‘I’m not used to first class,’ she admitted, picking up a silver butter knife to admire the railway crest on the handle. ‘The ticket was a present. Will you order for us – I’m sure it’s all delicious.’

  Josephine smiled at her. ‘To be honest,’ she said, ‘Inverness isn’t exactly overrun with top restaurants so I think we should just treat it as a posh café and have what we like. I’m going for the sole –

  how about you?’ Elspeth studied the menu and, when the waiter arrived, chose a no-nonsense steak and kidney pudding. ‘A glass of wine, miss?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d love one, but I wouldn’t know where to start,’ Elspeth said, looking at Josephine.

  ‘The Burgundy would go well with your lunch, so let’s both have that,’ she said and watched, amused, as the waiter unfolded Elspeth’s napkin and slid a silver vase of flowers closer to her with another wink that brought a flush to her cheeks.

  ‘I’d love to know more about the cast,’ Elspeth said, as their drinks arrived. ‘Tell me – are John Terry and Lydia Beaumont as close off stage as they are on? I won’t tell anyone if it’s a secret, but they make such a good couple as Richard and Anne.’