Maxim Jakubowski - The Best British Mysteries III

At that stage, of course, no one actually believed him.

Three p.m. on a Saturday afternoon and the Westlake Gallery resembled more a tin of sardines than a preview of an exhibition by a hitherto unknown artist. No invitation had been refused, placing something of a strain on the nosebags and drink trays, since Chilton invariably considered himself lucky if one third of his invites turned up to these dos, most often only a quarter (and those usually only relatives and friends). Today the place was packed to the gunwales and, despite bloodshot eyes and an aversion to bright lights, he wasn’t looking half as bad as Fizzy expected. That, she supposed, was because the gallery stood to make a mint from the sensational publicity and, to give Boucard his due, the Frenchman knew how to play the press.

‘Not drinking, sweetheart? Splendid!’ Kitty swapped her empty glass for Fizzy’s full one. ‘Stuff’s in perilously short supply. Well, chin-chin.’

Straightening his purple bow tie, Chilton Westlake mounted the podium and launched into a speech about his exciting new protégé and Fizzy noted the care he took to plug the other artists he’d sponsored, clearly intent on shifting as much stock as possible today. Sadly, though, her little plump friend was better at evaluating works of art than talking about them and her attention wandered in the direction of a certain portrait in a gilt frame. Entitled Woman in a Mask, it was typical of Boucard’s style in that-

‘I’m not convinced Bubbles finds the demi-monde half as riveting as she’d supposed,’ a wry baritone murmered in Fizzy’s cloche-covered ear.

She followed Teddy’s gaze to where the banker’s wife was sandwiched between a brace of hard-eyed villains and a group of women in red heels and even redder lips. In another surprise for Chilton, Boucard had mischievously invited several of his ‘prozzitutes et felons’, who were swigging champagne and helping themselves to cigars on an industrial scale. Bubbles’ high colour showed she was finding it hard to reconcile the fact that, any minute, she’d be seeing these same people sprawled naked across the gallery walls.

Chilton cleared his throat.

‘- I now call upon Louis to join us and declare this exhibition open!’

Nothing.

‘I said,’ he repeated, raising his voice, ‘that I now call upon Louis Boucard to come out from the back room and open the exhibition held in his honour.’

Knowing glances rippled round the crowd, as well as one or two giggles. Drink, drugs, you name it, only a relentless optimist like Chilton could have seriously have expected the artist to be sober during the daytime. Louis Boucard Was a creature of the night. In every respect.

‘Haw, haw.’ Chilton tried to cover the gaffe with humour, ‘Not sure I’ll understand you temperamental artistes -’

Bubbles seized the opportunity to detach herself from her underworld sandwich to fetch him, but she wasn’t alone for very long. The shrill scream and the accompanying crash of crystal said it all.

Louis Boucard was dead.

‘And you are, miss?’

‘Phyllis Potter, 62 Northwell Mansions, Bayswater.’ Fizzy’s smile was directed straight at the constable, but her glance was slanted at the man standing beside her. ‘Right between the museum and a gentleman’s club, if you must know.’

‘Thank you, sir?’

‘Edward James Hardcastle, 17b Elton Square, Chelsea.’ He kept his eyes straight. ‘Too many stuffed shirts and old fossils for my taste.’

‘Oh, dear. Elderly residents are they, sir?’

‘Not exactly, constable. Is that all?’

‘For the moment, yes, thank you. But we’re asking people not to venture far from the scene, as there will doubtless be other questions we wish to ask. In fact, I understand there’s a bar down the road -’

‘Jo-Jo’s,’ Fizzy said. ‘We know it well, constable. Regular watering hole,’ she added, tossing her boa over her shoulder, but instead of following Kitty and Marriott out into the afternoon sunshine, she took advantage of the milling confusion to slip into the anteroom.

Ugh. Louis Boucard wasn’t what one would call classically handsome in life. Grey and waxy in death, he was even more unprepossessing! She took care not to tread in the broken glass from Bubbles’ champagne as she approached the desk where he was slumped. Someone, it appeared, had caved the prodigy’s head in with a rather sleek black marble panther. The bloodied statuette lay on the desk among enough cocaine – she tasted the powder with a tentative finger – yes, with enough cocaine to supply a small continent for a decade, possibly two.

So then. Not content to take it himself. Louis had been pushing the stuff.

‘You realise he was dead before he was beaned?’

Fizzy yelped, half of her livid that she hadn’t noticed him leaning against the wall with his hands stuffed deep in his pockets. While the other half was too busy picturing her hatful of kids made in this man’s wretched image…

‘If you’re telling me someone frightened him to death,’ she said coolly, ‘I’m not remotely surprised.’

A muscle twitched at the side of Teddy Hardcastle’s mouth. ‘Boucard, I fear, was more tormenter than tormented.’

He feared right. Louis could be facing an army of flesh-eating zombies and he’d con them back to the grave.

‘Look.’

Teddy lifted a hank of dark hair to reveal a puncture wound in Boucard’s dirty neck.

‘The ice pick or whatever severed his spinal cord, paralysing all muscular activity. The lungs stopped functioning, so did the heart, but death, as always I’m afraid, comes slowly.’

Fizzy reeled and was immediately caught in a steel net that smelled of ski slopes and pine.

‘Never fear, Phyllis Potter of 62 Northwell Mansions, Bayswater. Looks like he was unconscious when it happened.’

Fizzy disentangled herself from his arms, slightly surprised that bookbinders had so many muscles.

‘Why aren’t the police swarming all over this room?’ she asked.

‘Ah, well. It would appear our boys in blue haven’t realised that there would be more blood, had Louis been alive when he was brained, and knowing the blunt instrument to be a favourite among the criminal underclass, they rather fancy one of those as the culprit.’

Solicitously, Teddy straightened her hat. Fizzy jerked away, hoping he couldn’t see the furious blush that had suffused her cheeks.

‘What guff,’ she snapped. ‘Those girls aren’t on the game because they enjoy it. They’re dishing out knee-tremblers because they’ve run out of options, and even if one of them had killed Louis Boucard, they’d never leave a fortune in cocaine lying around.’

Not when it would buy them their freedom – and no self-respecting thief would dream of walking away empty-handed, no matter how pushed they had been to commit murder!

‘Precisely the argument I presented to His Majesty’s law enforcers,’ he began. But whatever else he was going to say was overtaken by the door bursting open and Chilton, Orville, Gloria and a uniformed inspector rushing into the room.

‘This is an outrage,’ Chilton was blustering. ‘An absolute bloody outrage! Why should I want to kill him?’

‘You have a persuasive line in arguments, Mr Hardcastle,’ Fizzy muttered under her breath. ‘You get them to abandon the criminal underclass, so they’re pinching Chilton’s collar instead.’

The inspector shot her a venomous glance and continued.

‘You were overheard threatening the deceased in the Pink Parrot nightclub last night,’ he told Chilton, leaving the assembled company in no doubt as to his opinion of such a den of tangoed iniquity. ‘Lewis Buckard had given the press an authorised showing -’