An Expert in Murder Page 2

  Josephine smiled to herself, imagining how pleased Terry would be to perpetuate the rumour of a romance with his glamorous leading lady, but she had to crush Elspeth’s hopes. ‘No, they’re both . . . well, they’re just good friends,’ she said. ‘I suppose it would be difficult to work together if they were involved and they’ve got another joint project lined up with my next play.’

  9

  ‘Am I allowed to ask what it is?’

  ‘Of course you are. It’s a play about Mary Queen of Scots. In fact, I wrote it for Lydia. She’s always wanted to play her.’

  ‘How special to have a play written for you! She must be so pleased. I can’t wait to see her in it.’

  ‘You’ll see her sooner than that, actually. She should be meeting me at King’s Cross if this train arrives before she has to be at the theatre,’ Josephine explained, tucking in to her meal and encouraging Elspeth to do the same. ‘I’ll introduce you if you’d like to meet her.’

  ‘Oh, that would be wonderful. You know, I can’t wait to tell Uncle Frank about all this. He’s seen Richard almost as many times as I have.’

  ‘Is that who you’re staying with?’

  ‘Yes, I always do when I’m in London. He and my Aunty Betty have a shop in Hammersmith – shoes and knitwear, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Do you come down often?’

  ‘About once a month. I bring the hats and help out in the shop a bit. It’s a family business, so we all chip in. But Uncle Frank’s passionate about theatre. He collects memorabilia and drives Aunty Betty mad because there’s only a small flat above the shop and he packs it with stuff. When I’m down, we spend as much time as we can in the West End. He’ll be so thrilled when I tell him about my journey. I don’t suppose you could sign a copy of the programme for him and leave it at stage door, could you? Would it be too much trouble?’

  ‘Of course not, and I’ll sign your magazine as well if you like.’

  She thought for a moment, then said: ‘Do you have your tickets for the show yet? I’ve got some reserved for the week and you’d be most welcome to join me one evening.’ It was unlike her to encourage intimacy in this way but, for some reason, she felt protective towards the young woman in front of her. Much to her surprise, the response to her question was a pink tide which began at Elspeth’s neck and rose slowly upwards.

  ‘Actually, I’m going with someone tomorrow night and he’s got us top price seats,’ she explained. ‘We’ve been out a few times and 10

  he’s lovely. It’s his first job in theatre and he doesn’t get much time off, so I suppose the last thing he needs is to sit through it all again,’ she added, and instantly looked horrified. ‘Not that he doesn’t love the play, of course, it’s just . . .’

  She tailed off, at a loss as to how to redeem herself, and Josephine came to her rescue. ‘Please don’t worry – if I could choose between another night with Richard and a good dinner at the Cowdray Club, there’d really be no contest. You can have too much of a good thing. No matter how entertaining it is for the audience, it’s a bit of a busman’s holiday if you work there – he must be very keen on you to go at all.’

  As Elspeth blushed again and excused herself for a moment, Josephine asked for the bill. She looked on, amused, as the waiter transferred his attentions from Elspeth to another table, where he spent more time than was strictly necessary polishing a crystal glass for a young woman dining alone. This girl was more receptive, and she watched while the couple circled round each other, wondering what the outcome would be. When Elspeth reappeared, Josephine shook off her insistence that the bill should be halved and they headed back to their compartment.

  At last, the carriages began snaking through the outskirts of the capital. How England’s cities were changing, Josephine thought, looking out at the small, modern houses and giant cine-mas which seemed to have sprung up everywhere. As the train slowed its speed still further and ran into a deep cutting, the dwindling daylight vanished altogether. When it returned, it gave form to the dark bulk of St Pancras and the Midland Grand, an edifice which would have looked more at home in a gothic tale of terror than it did next to the ordinary contours of King’s Cross.

  Josephine had heard that engine drivers on this route took a pride in the journey, racing against the timetable and each other to achieve speeds of more than ninety miles an hour, and she was not the only passenger on board to offer up a silent prayer of thanks to the competitive nature which had brought the train to its destination less than an hour behind schedule.

  *

  11

  Stamping her feet against the coldness of the day, Lydia Beaumont was nevertheless in a remarkably good mood. Ever the actress, she always felt an affinity with the transience and variety of somewhere like King’s Cross: the wandering population of travellers and street traders had an anonymity which intrigued her and a colour which appealed to her weakness for showmanship and talent for mimicry.

  The other reason for Lydia’s unshakeable good humour was standing beside her. She and Marta Fox were, to paraphrase her character in the play, still at the stage in their relationship where the heavens could collapse without undue damage to either of them. By March, it was not uncommon for the year to have offered Lydia at least three different versions of the love of her life, but Marta had survived to enter victoriously into a fourth month of tenure. By Lydia’s own admission, this was a relationship of some permanence.

  From the approaching train, Josephine spotted her friend and felt the same mixture of admiration and apprehension that always accompanied their meetings: admiration for her graceful charm and childlike mischief, for the humour which was always in her eyes and never far from the corners of her mouth; apprehension because, if she were honest, Josephine was almost as uncomfortable with the celebrity of others as she was with her own. With Lydia, though, there had been a mutual appreciation from the out-set – a genuine trust stemming from their shared frankness and hatred of vanity in all its guises – and Josephine had come to value the friendship greatly, whilst marvelling that it should be hers.

  From force of habit, she cast an appraising eye over the woman who stood next to Lydia on the platform and was pleased to note that her own first impressions tallied with the description that her friend’s letters had carried to Inverness. Even from a distance, there was an air of calm about her, a quiet containment in the res-olute stance that held its own beauty. If Marta proved as strong as she seemed, she could be just the antidote Lydia needed to the fickleness which was an inevitable part of her life in the theatre.

  Elspeth was so excited at the sight of Anne of Bohemia alive and 12

  well less than fifty yards away that Josephine’s gentle wave of greeting could hardly be seen from the platform. Keen to leave the train and meet Lydia, the girl reached up to drag her bag down from the luggage rack but, in her haste, forgot that she had opened it earlier to find the magazine for Josephine to sign. When its contents spilled out onto the floor, she looked mortified and Josephine

  – whose instinct towards amusement was overcome by her sympathy for Elspeth’s vulnerability – came quickly to her aid. As the two scrabbled on the floor for stray sweets and loose change, they looked at each other through the legs of the other passengers, and laughter soon won out. Standing back against the window to allow everyone else to gather their belongings, they took a minute to compose themselves sufficiently to leave the compartment.

  What sort of scene they were creating for those on the platform, Josephine could hardly imagine.

  ‘Here she is at last,’ said Lydia, pointing towards the carriage window. ‘My God, dear, have you seen that hat?’ Marta took one look and muttered something about getting them a place in the queue for taxis. ‘We’ll be with you in a jiffy,’ Lydia called after her.

  When she turned back to the train, Josephine was on her way over with the companion who had made such an impression on the train’s arrival. Had she not known her, Lydia would never have guessed that this qu
iet Scottish woman, dressed simply in a dark suit and pearls, was the author of the biggest hit in the West End. Nothing about Josephine had changed since Lydia first became aware of her as a shadowy presence in the stalls during rehearsals. She still looked more like a school teacher or one of those solitary women you saw writing letters in the corner of a hotel lounge. It had been hard to get to know her, as she discouraged intimacy and rarely gave her confidence to anyone, but the effort had been worthwhile. Josephine was thoughtful and sensitive, interested in everything and possessed of a puckish, sarcastic wit that was as evident in her conversation as it was in her work.

  Greeting Lydia with a hug, Josephine introduced the girl as a friend she had met on the journey down. The actress, always gracious when faced with her public, went through the routine of 13

  conversation and autographs that had become second nature to her, whilst managing to make Elspeth feel that she was the first person ever to mention the poignancy of the death scene. After a politely timed exchange of charm and admiration, she remembered Marta and the waiting taxi. ‘Come on, we must get you safely to that madhouse you’re staying in,’ she said to Josephine.

  ‘I’m sure you could do with a rest after such a long day, and I need to be at the theatre on time or Johnny will be a bag of nerves throughout the entire first act. You’d think he’d be used to it by now.’ She flashed a winning smile at Elspeth, and picked up Josephine’s travelling case. ‘Is the rest of your luggage being sent on?’ she asked.

  At the mention of luggage, a look of panic crossed Elspeth’s face. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she cried. ‘After all that fuss, I’ve left my bag on the train. I must go back and get it, then I’d better find my uncle. My mother’s entire new range is in there,’ she explained, gesturing towards the mountain of hat boxes that an unlucky porter had felt obliged to transfer from the luggage car to a platform trolley, ‘and she’ll kill us if we don’t get it safely delivered to Lillibet’s.’ Hugging Josephine tightly and promising to look her up at the theatre, Elspeth vanished back into the carriage from which she had so thoroughly emerged, too concerned about her bag to notice that the feather had become dislodged from her hat and now lay on the platform floor. Josephine bent down to pick it up.

  ‘Keep it – it’ll suit you,’ teased Lydia, looking half-admiringly, half-sympathetically at her friend. ‘You really do have the patience of Job. I don’t know anyone else who could spend a day with all that enthusiasm and still look sane at the end of it.’

  Josephine smiled. ‘Much to my surprise, it’s been a pleasure. I must give it back to her, though,’ she said, turning towards the train.’ She’d be so sad not to have it when she meets her young man.’

  Lydia caught her arm. ‘We really must go, Josephine – I can’t be late. Give it to her when she comes to see you at the theatre. My guess is that it won’t be long.’

  14

  Josephine hesitated. ‘No, you’re right. I’ll probably see her tomorrow. Let’s go and find Marta – I’m dying to meet her.’

  ‘Yes, and you can tell me whether this novel that she’s writing is any good or not. She’s far too divine for me to have any way of telling. She could jot down the shipping forecast and I’d think it was pure Daviot!’ Laughing, the two women walked out into the street, too engrossed in their conversation to notice the figure now moving towards the train.

  Back on board, Elspeth saw with relief that her bag was still on the floor where she had left it. The train seemed almost deserted, the only noise coming from further down the car where staff were presumably preparing for the next journey. Looking down at the magazine, which now held two precious signatures, she smiled to herself and placed it carefully in the bag’s side pocket, thinking with excitement of the pleasure she would get from watching the next performance now that she knew two of the people involved.

  As she buttoned the pocket securely and made sure this time that the rest of the bag was fastened, she heard a noise at the door behind her. Turning to explain to the guard that she had forgotten something and was just about to leave, she stared with recognition, then confusion, at a face which she had not expected to see on the train. Instinctively, before she had a chance to consider the strangeness of the moment, she took the gift that was held out to her with a smile and looked down at the doll in her hands, a souvenir of her beloved play and something she had longed to own.

  When her companion took the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign from its hook and hung it outside the door, then stepped quickly over to the window to pull down the blind, Elspeth opened her mouth to protest, but the words were too slow to save her.

  An arm reached out towards her, drawing her into a deadly embrace which seemed to mock the physical affection she had so recently come to know. There was no time to scream. The hand that gripped the back of her neck, holding her close, was swift and sure, and by now no strength was needed. Surprise had given way to a paralysing horror and she had no more control over her limbs 15

  than the doll which fell to the floor and lay staring upwards, an indifferent witness to her final moments. She tried to breathe normally, to stay calm, but her face was pressed into her assailant’s chest and panic welled up in her as she realised that this must surely be death. Please God, no, she thought, not now, not when I’m so happy.

  When the lethal point punctured her skin, she felt nothing more than a sharp blow beneath her ribs but there was no chance to be thankful for the lack of pain, nor to wonder that her body should surrender itself with so little ceremony. In that briefest of moments, somewhere between waking and oblivion, between life and death, she was aware of all she would miss but the longing was soon over, replaced as she fell to her knees by a lasting, if pre-mature, peace.

  16

  Two

  Detective Inspector Archie Penrose could never travel in the King’s Cross area without feeling instantly depressed. North London was the city at its most forbidding and, despite the widening of the streets, its most claustrophobic. He drove down an uninspiring thoroughfare bordered with drab houses, few of which had ever been decorated or even cleaned, and past the straggling shabbiness of Euston Station. Then there was King’s Cross itself; he always thought that the station’s facade – two main arches separated by a clock tower of dreadful yellow brick, turned black with the dirt of ages – looked more like the entrance to a gaol than the gateway to a capital. Certainly it did nothing to help a man on his way to a murder investigation.

  A sizeable crowd had gathered at the head of Platform Eight, obscuring his view of the train in which the girl’s body had been discovered less than an hour ago by a young railway employee.

  According to Penrose’s colleague, Sergeant Fallowfield, the boy was now in a state of shock. Fallowfield, who had been handling an incident round the corner in Judd Street when the call came in and was first on the scene, approached him now, pushing his way through the on-lookers with very little patience for their ghoulish curiosity.

  ‘You’d think they’d have something better to do on a Friday night, wouldn’t you, Sir? Bloody vultures, the lot of ’em.’

  The comment was uncharacteristic of his sergeant, who usually had a more positive view of human nature despite years of experience to the contrary. Whatever he had seen on the train had clearly got to him. ‘Poor kid, she can’t be more than twenty,’ Fallowfield 17

  said, as if reading his thoughts. ‘Hardly had a chance to start her life, let alone live it.’

  ‘Do we know who she is?’ Penrose asked.

  ‘Assuming it’s her bag in the carriage, her name’s Elspeth Simmons and she’s from Berwick-on-Tweed – at least, that’s where she got on the train, and it’s a return ticket. It’s a nasty one, this, Sir – as spiteful as anything I’ve seen. I reckon we’ve got a sick bastard on our hands.’

  When he saw what awaited him in the sealed-off carriage, Penrose could only agree. The dead girl sat – or rather seemed to have been composed – on the middle of the three seats to the right of the co
mpartment, an ornate and deadly hatpin protruding from under her breastbone. Her hands had been clasped together in front of her in a mockery of applause at the scene which someone had created for her benefit in the vacant space opposite. There, a pair of dolls – one male and one female – had been carefully arranged on the seat like actors on a stage. They stood together in a half embrace, and he noticed that the woman’s left hand – the one that bore her wedding ring – had been broken off and lay on its own in front of the couple like a sinister prop from a horror film. Close to them on the seat was a hand-written note on expensive-looking paper: ‘Lilies are more fashionable,’ it said, but the flower that lay on the floor was not a lily but an iris.

  It was immediately obvious to him that this was not a random or spontaneous killing but a carefully thought-out, and probably deeply personal, act of violence. Not for a second did he think that the murderer wished to be quickly identified, but there could be little doubt that a message could be traced in every object that he – or she – had been so careful to leave on and around the body.

  It was a crime that had required considerable nerve.

  ‘Were the blinds up or down when she was found?’ he asked.

  ‘Both down, Sir. The boy says he pulled that one up as soon as he came in.’

  Even so, Penrose thought, the scene must have taken a few minutes to arrange once the murder had been committed, and that would mean a greater risk of discovery than most people could 18

  countenance. That was the point, though: in a symbolic killing such as this, they were not dealing with the fears and doubts of a normal person but with the arrogance and sense of invulnerability that invariably accompanied evil.

  ‘And is this exactly how she was found?’

  ‘Yes, or so he says. Forrester’s his name and he’s obviously frightened out of his wits. Maybrick’s had the waiting room cleared and taken him there with a cup of tea. Poor little sod – I’m not surprised he’s scared: I wouldn’t have liked to walk in on something like this at his age. Those dolls are enough to put the wind up anybody, and they gave him a right start – as much as finding the body.’