Donald Bain - Gin and Daggers

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” I said as we left the palace grounds and walked to the Bayswater Road in search of a cab. We approached a small stand from which a young boy sold newspapers. He shouted out the most provocative headline of the day: “AINSWORTH MURDERER NABBED. READ ALL ABOUT IT, AINSWORTH MURDERER NABBED.”

Lucas literally jerked the paper from the boy’s hand and stared at the front page. “Look, Jessica.”

We gathered around him and looked down at the headline. Sure enough, that’s what it said.

“You look, you pay,” the boy said. Seth handed him money and we moved a few feet away. Lucas read the short front-page article aloud to us. The gist of it was that Scotland Yard’s Chief Inspector George Sutherland had announced that evidence had been gathered to support a murder charge against Count Antonio Zara, Marjorie Ainsworth’s Italian brother-in-law. Italian authorities had been notified, and once an arrest was made, extradition proceedings would begin immediately.

“I never did trust him,” Lucas said.

“Nor did I,” I said.

A line at the end of the story indicated that other material concerning the Ainsworth murder could be found on an inside page. Lucas turned to it. The lead item was my announcement at the ISMW dinner that I would be revealing startling information about the true authorship of Gin and Daggers. My picture accompanied the story. Lucas looked at me and said, “You knew about this, didn’t you?”

“About what, Count Zara being accused of Marjorie’s murder? Of course I didn’t. If I had, you would have been the first to hear.”

His expression was a mixture of skepticism and confusion.

“Let’s get back to the hotel,” I said. “There’s an empty taxi.” We ran to it and got in.

“This was a lovely stroll, Jessica, but I don’t see the purpose of it.”

“Lucas, must there always be a purpose to everything? I just felt like a walk, wanted to soak up a little bit of London before we left. Now that the murder has been solved, I suppose we’ll be able to leave on schedule.”

“Fine with me,” said Mort Metzger. “I can’t stay forever. I don’t have many vacation days left.”

I patted his knee. “Morton, it was so good of you to use your vacation to come here to give me support.” I said to both Mort and Seth, “You are dear friends, and I am very fortunate to have you.”

We pushed our way through a large crowd of press people at the Savoy who shouted questions at me, most pertaining to the announcement I promised to make, some dealing with the news that Ona Ainsworth-Zara’s husband, Count Antonio Zara, had been charged with Marjorie’s murder. I stopped and said, “The announcement I promised will be made tomorrow. As for the charges against Count Zara, I can only assume that the painstaking investigation undertaken by Chief Inspector Sutherland of Scotland Yard has successfully pointed to Count Zara, which comes as a relief to every other suspect… including this one. Please, I have nothing else to say until tomorrow.”

Lucas, Seth, and Morton wanted to come up to my suite, but I dissuaded them. I went there by myself, locked the door, and sat down at the desk. The Times had been delivered to the room, and I carefully reread the front-page story and the inside items pertaining to Marjorie Ainsworth.

I went downstairs and used the rear entrance shown to me early in my stay by the assistant manager, grabbed a cab, and said, “Pindar Street, please.”

Jason Harris’s landlady was sitting on the front steps smoking a cigarette with a neighbor. She screwed up her face when I approached as though trying to remember where she’d seen me.

“Good morning,” I said. “Has Mr. Maroney returned?”

She cackled. “No, and not likely he ever will.”

“I want to leave another note under Mr. Harris’s door.”

“No need to do that,” the landlady said. “She’s up there.”

“She?”

“The little dark one, Harris’s bird. She paid up his rent, she did. Can’t take that from her.”

“Excuse me,” I said, stepping between the two older ladies and going up the stairs. Jason’s door was partially opened. I pushed it open the rest of the way and said, “Maria.”

Maria Giacona stood by the window holding a handkerchief stained with blood to her nose.

“Maria, what happened?” I asked, going to her. Now I saw a purplish yellow lump above her left eye. “Who hit you?” I could think only of Jason Harris, of course.

She looked at me with those large, brown, pleading eyes and sat on a crate used as an end table. She continued to cry and to attempt to stem the flow of blood from her nostrils. I crouched down and placed my hand on her knee. I was about to ask her again who’d struck her, but the question was suddenly rendered unnecessary. I raised my face and sniffed the unmistakable scent of Victorian posy in the small room, certainly not the sort of fragrance Maria-or Jason Harris-would use.

“Maria, was Jane Portelaine here? Was she the one who hit you?”

She shook her head. I didn’t believe her.

“We should get some ice for your nose and eye,” I said. “Why don’t you come with me and we’ll find a pharmacy. That nasty-looking bruise is getting bigger every second.”

She slowly moved the handkerchief away from her nose. The bleeding seemed to have stopped. “Lie down with your head back for a few minutes,” I said.

“No, I have to go.”

She started to get up, but I pushed down on her knees. “Maria, you must tell me if Jane Portelaine did this to you, and why.”

She gently touched her nose with her index finger, and examined it for fresh blood. She said, “I heard what you plan to do, Mrs. Fletcher. You are going to announce that Jason wrote Gin and Daggers?”

“You read the paper.”

“Yes, and saw it on the television. Are you really going to say that?”

“Yes, because I believe it to be true. I would do anything to avoid injuring the memory of my friend Marjorie Ainsworth, but I think there is a greater truth at stake here. Although Jason is no longer alive to receive the accolades he deserves, his talent should be recognized.”

A small smile came to her face.

“I knew you’d be pleased, Maria. Where have you been? You disappeared so suddenly.”

“I had to get away, Mrs. Fletcher. Jason’s murder was too much for me to bear.”

“I understand. I just wish you’d kept in touch, that’s all. Why did you come to the flat today? The landlady said you paid Jason’s back rent.”

“Yes. I thought I would live here for a while. I couldn’t bear to be near this place after he was killed, but now I have a need to touch everything that was his.”

“I understand that, too.” I did, of course. I’d gone through similar shifts in emotion after Frank died.

I suggested again that we find a pharmacy, and this time she was agreeable. We went downstairs and I asked the landlady for the location of the nearest one. She looked at Maria’s face and shook her head.

I repeated my question, and she told me there was one two streets away. Maria had started to walk in the direction the landlady pointed. I quickly asked, “The tall, thin lady who was here. How long ago did she leave?”

“The scarecrow? No more than fifteen minutes.”

“Thank you.”

The pharmacist invited us into the back room of his shop, where he prepared an icepack for Maria to hold against her face. He said there wasn’t anything else to be done, except report the attack to the police.

“No one attacked me,” Maria said. “I fell.”

“And I’m the Duke of Windsor,” he said. I offered to pay him, but he wouldn’t accept anything.

We left the pharmacy and walked slowly down the street until we reached a small pizza parlor. “Feel like a slice?” I asked. “I haven’t had pizza in a long time. Is the London version as good as we have back in the States?”