Mornings in London Read online

  “Your business lives on reputation, and while notoriety can be an asset in certain situations, you’re in a precarious spot.”

  I’m always in a precarious spot; I’m beginning to think it’s my natural environment. “What do you want?”

  “Why, your help as a citizen,” Davis said promptly. “We need to find who killed Bosworth, and to do that, we need to know more about his contacts. Outside the country house set.”

  “Fine, but you must find Poppy. I’m afraid that either she did not leave willingly or she was apprehended on the way to the station. And, really, she shouldn’t have been at the Larkins at all. You didn’t have enough to charge her, and both of us had identified the blouse, so why weren’t we returned to London?”

  Inspector Davis, like Carstairs, resorted to a cigarette. He lit up, blew out the match, and said, “There are other dimensions to the case.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “Dimensions of concern to the Met? Or some other agency?”

  “You might say that.”

  “You put my cousin in danger,” I said, beginning to get angry. “For reasons that have nothing to do with any evidence against her!”

  “She suggested Larkin Manor, as you’ll remember,” Carstairs said quickly.

  “But you accepted an idea that was clearly irregular. Am I right?”

  “It was a calculated gamble,” Davis said.

  “With my cousin’s life. When she asked me to accept the Larkins’ invitation, she said that she was in a desperate state. I thought that was hyperbole, because Poppy likes a bit of drama, but there was something more, wasn’t there?”

  I waited. The two inspectors traded glances. “She had apparently become uneasy about certain of Bosworth’s activities, perhaps because of your warning,” Davis said. “She took her concern to the major, her father’s old friend. The major thought she was romancing but suggested the house party as an opportunity to find out. Not his best idea.”

  That was the first thing I could wholeheartedly agree on.

  Chapter 6

  Inspector Carstairs returned to Larkin Manor to direct the search parties. I returned to London with Inspector Davis, even though a third-class train ticket would have suited me better. “Expenses,” he said drily and gave me to understand I was to be escorted. He focused on the road and drove in silence. Fine by me. Our meeting had left me with more questions than answers, and I had a lot to think about.

  The one thing I understood was that Carstairs and Davis had different agendas. Carstairs wanted Freddie’s killer. That Davis’s brief was altogether more slippery and ill-defined was confirmed by his remarks when we arrived in London. “You’ll have opportunities to be useful,” he said, as if I was an anxious would-be volunteer.

  I asked for details.

  “Go about your usual routine but keep your eyes open,” he said.

  That did not seem much of a directive until he added, “Rinaldi.”

  “What about him?”

  “You know him?”

  “Only from this past weekend.”

  “A man you ought to meet again; I’ll see it’s arranged.” He glanced at the sign above my showroom and checked the chairs, elegantly displayed in front of our distinctive white rubber drapes. “Very nice. You’ll hear from me. Be sure to respond.”

  That sounded like a threat, but I didn’t commit myself and went inside.

  “Copper?” asked Nan, who had been watching from the window.

  “Supposedly the Met.”

  She nodded. “The Met handles high-profile homicides.” Nan’s relish was muted only by my involvement and Poppy’s. As soon as she heard the details, she declared that a visit to my aunt was essential. My idea of a telegram or a telephone call was off the table. “Besides,” she said, “you’ll need a list of Miss Poppy’s closest friends. Examine her bedroom if you can. She’ll have photos and maybe even letters. You’ll perhaps learn who she trusts.”

  With this excellent advice in hand, I changed my shirt and socks, combed my hair, and set out for my aunt Theresa’s, where drama ensued. My aunt is a social tiger and still quite a beauty. She was Deb of the Year back at the turn of the century, then a colonel’s lady in the Punjab. As a result, she’s struggled ever since the war with what she refers to as Modern Society. Capitalized. I was normally regarded as an Unregenerate Bohemian—please capitalize that as well—and I expected an uncomfortable and unproductive meeting.

  My aunt met me with a wide-ranging denunciation of police, friends, and relatives. She was at her stormy best, but I saw that, underneath, she was frightened. This was not just about Modern Society but about her daughter, who irritates and disappoints her in some ways, but who is much loved and the last of her family.

  “Aunt Theresa,” I said when she caught her breath. “We need to find Poppy.”

  She came down to earth looking a couple decades older. “That Carstairs is supposedly searching,” she said with a sniff. I guessed the laconic, smoke-embalmed Sussex inspector had not impressed. “Thank goodness, the Met is involved.”

  “And will be more involved now that Poppy’s gone missing.”

  “They can’t think she—” my aunt exclaimed, unable to finish the thought.

  “Everyone who was at Larkin Manor’s a possibility, but whoever planted that blouse did Poppy a favor, because now the police suspect that someone is trying to frame her. They hinted as much today. But they are troubled by her absence. Someone will undoubtedly be here fairly soon to question you and search her room.”

  This idea so irritated my aunt that she gave me the names of some of Poppy’s friends—featherheads every one, and two never came out properly—before taking me up to her room. I feared that a thorough search under her eyes would be impossible, and I was wondering how best to proceed when my aunt was summoned for a telephone call.

  I immediately opened the small writing desk and ruffled through Poppy’s address book for the addresses and numbers of the featherheads, that is, friends known to my aunt, all from families with good incomes and correct pedigrees. Likely or even useful people to call if one was on the lam? I wasn’t so sure.

  Some letters awaiting answer were in the pigeonholes. They were bright with brittle deb chat but brief and as uninformative as the few cards saved from special formal dances and parties. Not a line indicated anyone Poppy would call in dire circumstances. Like my aunt, I was beginning to feel at sea with Modern Society, before I remembered Poppy’s lonely bookshelf with her collection of schoolgirl scrapbooks and autograph albums. Too juvenile for words had been her assessment.

  She was right about that. But Lizzie, who had pledged undying friendship to my tough hockey cocaptain, and Alexandra, who recalled that orgy of Victoria cake and a certain boy from Eton, raised my hopes. Especially the reference to the boy from Eton; I might have something in common with the deb set, after all. Lizzie’s and Alexandra’s surnames and addresses were in Poppy’s book. If she remained missing, no doubt the police would work through the list and contact every one. I needed to be more selective.

  I went through the drawers and closet again, neat and shipshape, with all the garments we’d seen yesterday. Poppy had gone to Sussex with only the clothes on her back. She’d certainly want a change, especially if she had been out in last night’s torrential storm. Provided, that was, that she was all right, that she was being reckless and indifferent to authority and not lying in some sodden field like Freddie.

  No defeatism, Francis! She was fine, off somewhere with Lizzie or Alexandra, and I guessed that she’d avoid home, where her mother would have definite ideas about how to proceed, and head to the flat. I remembered that Poppy also kept the box with her contraceptive device there, another bit of Modern Society to be kept from Aunt Theresa’s prying eyes. And what else? When we’d searched her rooms, we’d been looking for whatever Freddie might have hidden, not
for letters or appointments to meet old friends. A visit to the flat was in order, and soon.

  How to manage that? There was no helpful concierge. Assuming I could locate the landlord quickly, would I be able to talk my way in before Poppy’s disappearance hit the press? Highly doubtful. I should have been instructed in the useful art of breaking and entering instead of Latin declensions and botanical phyla.

  I stood still in the middle of the room. Thanks to my training with Maurice, I am strengthening an already good visual memory. Think of yesterday, Francis. Imagine yesterday, searching this very room and giving it up as a bad job before Poppy offers a treat of tea and cake. She picks up her jacket from the bed, puts her hand in the right-hand pocket, and pulls out—keys. Yes, her now unneeded keys to the flat. Where did she put them? Concentrate! I imagined her arm, shapely and muscular from riding, the elegant curve of her hand causing the rattle of metal on—on marble. I checked the fireplace mantel. The flat keys were safe in my pocket before Aunt Theresa returned along the hall.

  I took the Tube to the British Museum and walked to Poppy’s flat, where I trotted briskly up the stairs like a man absolutely entitled to be there. A quick look both ways down the hall, then I unlocked the door of the flat and slipped inside. “Poppy?” I called hopefully.

  Silence. Of course, she wasn’t there; Poppy was safe elsewhere. I drew the curtains and turned on the lights. Same drill: desk, drawers, closets, but this time looking for notes, letters. Freddie, I learned, had put his sentiments in writing. Absent his sapphire eyes, handsome shoulders, and muscular rump, even his prose seemed phony. Forget Freddie!

  I was in the flat over an hour, and the closest I came to anything useful was a note in Poppy’s writing: Call Lizzie. So, still very much in touch. A hockey cocaptain sounded like a girl who might be useful in a pickle. I’d call her first. I was ready to lock up when I noticed the small red leather box holding Poppy’s Dutch cap, or whatever it was called. I’d been too much of a gentleman to open it while she was there, but now it couldn’t hurt to satisfy my curiosity.

  Inside was a simple, but rather alarming, rubber device. Could Freddie have been worth this? I closed the box and set it down. Women are, indeed, the valiant sex, I thought, and then I had another idea. I opened the box and removed the cap so that I could poke at what I’d registered as the slightly wrinkled lining. With the help of a nail file, I lifted the paper. Underneath were several dark strips: photo negatives. Freddie really was no gentleman.

  Why hadn’t he removed them after the quarrel? He’d stormed upstairs, leaving Poppy in the library. He could have gone into her room and collected the box. Something must have prevented him: chambermaid at work or that sly Rinaldi waiting in his room or the major eager to share some architectural tidbit? As a result, he’d left without what I suspected was his blackmail ammunition. Hence his return.

  What now, Francis? Be a good citizen and inform Inspector Davis? I wasn’t quite that civic-minded, especially when he’d demand to know how I’d gotten into the flat. Should I take the neutral course, put everything back, and leave the box for the police to discover? That would be safest for me, but I could already envision the headlines: SECRETS STASHED IN FORMER DEB’S FLAT, DEB’S UNMENTIONABLE HOLDS BLACKMAIL PHOTOS, SOCIETY GIRL’S SECRET LIFE. I pocketed the box, deciding there would be time enough to turn the negatives in after Poppy was found.

  I switched off the lights and reopened the drapes in time to see a patrol car outside, the driver backing up and pulling ahead several times in a complicated maneuver to bring the vehicle to the curb. I stepped back from the window as they opened the car doors. Make a run downstairs, hide in the basement? Go up another floor and hope to loiter unobserved? Nonsense! Panic was absurd. I locked the door behind me and walked downstairs, trying to look discouraged and disconsolate—not terribly hard under the circumstances. Two uniformed cops were standing beside their patrol car, waiting for their superior. Inspector Davis, quite likely.

  I was conscious of the leather box and Poppy’s keys in my pocket, but I gave them a smile and a nod. One of them was worth a second look, too, with a heavy, rather rough face and wide shoulders. Don’t even think about that, Francis!

  “You live in this building, mate?” his partner asked. This one was thin, with scarred cheeks and a crooked nose, less enticing but clearly more savvy.

  “I stopped by hoping to see a friend. But no luck.” Say nothing more, Francis!

  He nodded, and I walked off at a steady, good citizen pace until I turned the corner and spotted a bus arriving half a block away. I made it gasping just as the doors were closing. Two stops later, I was back on foot and making my way to the Tube, when I passed an available phone box. I tried both Lizzie of the hockey pitch and Alexandra, who favored boys from Eton. Miss Elizabeth was not available. The phone rang unanswered at Miss Alexandra’s. I guessed that she lived on her own in a flat without a servant.

  Could one or both of them be off somewhere with Poppy? That was my best hope, otherwise my cousin could be lying somewhere on the Downs. I shook my head at the thought. Don’t imagine disasters, Francis! Poppy was quite capable negotiating the wretched countryside on her own and getting a ride back to London. Most likely, she was already at my aunt’s. If so, she must stay there and not return to the flat that was even now crawling with coppers. I used my last pennies to call Aunt Theresa, but she’d had no word.

  I didn’t like that at all and to distract myself, I showed Nan the negatives as soon as I got home. “I just don’t know what’s on them.”

  “Why not let Ed develop them for you?”

  Ed Winthrop owned a small photo shop nearby. He took my advertising photographs and recorded new designs, but I disliked involving him with the negatives. Dodgy photos had brought someone I knew in France to a nasty end, and I had a bad feeling about these. “I think I’d better know what’s on them first.”

  “You’ll need a strong light. And maybe my magnifying glass?”

  I said that might do, and Nan fetched her large magnifier. I’ve noticed that she’s using the glass more and more, and lately she’s been complaining of how small the print is in her favorite newspapers. I don’t like to think what that means.

  I switched on my gooseneck desk lamp and squinted at the negatives. One strip, I thought, showed figures; the other seemed nothing more than a series of gray patterns. Neither was really legible until Nan brought the magnifying glass, and, when our fingers proved too awkward, a pair of tweezers. We turned the gooseneck lamp so that the bulb faced up. Nan held the film as steady as she could and, blinking from the glare, I moved the magnifying glass over the images, strange in their reversal of dark and light.

  “Well!” said Nan.

  Three naked men were entangled on a wash of black that must represent sheets. One’s face was visible, the other two would have to be recognized by their bare nether anatomies. “Freddie Bosworth earned his money by keeping this sort of business secret,” I said.

  “Poor Miss Poppy!”

  “Exactly.”

  “He was no gentleman, not taking and selling pictures like that,” said Nan.

  “I think that these photos are why he returned to Larkin Manor. And maybe why he was killed. Depending on who these men are.”

  “Are the photos all the same?”

  “All men in motion, yes. But I can’t tell if they’re the same individuals. What about the other strip?”

  She lifted the second one. “Blank, don’t you think?”

  “I doubt he’d have saved a damaged strip.” I finally got the magnifying glass in the right place. “It’s pages of a document, Nan.”

  “Can you make anything out?”

  I pulled the magnifying glass back and moved it from side to side. “‘Chain’ something. That can’t be right. ‘Chain Home.’”

  “A funny name for a man.”

  “I’m not sure it’s a
man. There’s something—I think the word is magnetron. Ever hear of such a thing?”

  “Sounds like magnet. A scientific device? I don’t think that’s what those other pictures were about.”

  “Certainly not.” I moved the glass back a little. “‘Bawdsey’ something ‘Stat—.’ Maybe Station.” I put down the glass and, blinking, Nan laid down the film. “I think Freddie branched out to some scientific material.”

  “Or used his old tricks to get new material,” Nan suggested.

  That seemed even more likely. I ran through the guests in my mind. Who would be more apt to buy such material than Rinaldi?­ No wonder he was in Freddie’s room. “One of the guests was an Italian attaché or diplomat. Exact status unclear.”

  “Trust it to be some foreigner!” Nan exclaimed. “Killed him with a knife! And then he’d claim—what is it?”

  “Diplomatic immunity. Could be.” Especially since Inspector Davis was keen for me to meet Rinaldi again. “But before we do anything more, I’d better see if I can find out what a magnetron is.”

  At the British Museum reading room, I presented my question to a librarian. A consultation behind the desk followed. Finally, the fact that this was a piece of electromagnetic equipment was confirmed, and some proper citations obtained. I waited for two periodicals. One, in German that really stretched my Deutsch, discussed the work of an inventor named Christian Hülsmeyer. He’d obtained Reichspatent Nr. 165546 for a device to prevent ships colliding in fog.

  Good and useful, I was sure, but my mysterious document was in English. Anyway, Hülsmeyer had not developed a magnetron, whatever that was, although he did work with mysterious waves, relatives of x-rays or radio waves. I turned with relief to the second, English language, journal. Highly technical, the article was mostly impenetrable, but in one paragraph, I came across cavity magnetron. On my fourth reading, I figured out that this hollow device caused streams of electrons to oscillate, producing something called microwaves.