Peter Lovesey - Murder on the Short List

Sly was leading him towards the harp. He’d called him maestro. It didn’t make any sense, but this had to be Igor Gurney, the harpist. Was it possible that Sly Small, for all his evil reputation, had experienced a crisis of conscience, just as Bernie had? Was he about to reunite the harp with its owner?

If so, they were in for a surprise.

The blind man reached the harp and felt for it. “Why isn’t it in its case?” he asked. “It should have travelled in its case.”

“I, em... the wheels came off,” Bernie improvised. “It got too heavy, so I lifted it out.”

The hands were all over the harp, feeling the carved columns and pedestals. “This isn’t mine.”

Bernie felt a surge of panic. He’d hoped one Horngacher was very like another. This one from Winchester would have fooled Sly for sure. And Rocky. He hadn’t bargained on Igor Gurney checking it over.

“What do you mean?” Sly said. “It’s got to be yours.” He turned to Bernie. “You picked it up from the Albert Hall like I said, didn’t you?”

“Well, yes...” Bernie started to say.

“It’s a very fine instrument, but it isn’t mine,” Gurney insisted. He plucked at the strings. “It wants tuning. What have you done with my harp?”

“He’s shafted us, the bastard,” Sly said. “What kind of fools do you take us for?” Without warning, he pulled out a gun and shoved it into Bernie’s ribcage. “I’ll show you what I do to two-timing finks like you.”

“No violence, please,” Gurney said. Then the familiar bars of the William Tell Overture sounded from somewhere in his pocket. He pulled out a mobile phone and listened. His face registered extreme shock. “It’s my chauffeur. The police are at the door.”

“Flaming hell.” Sly dropped his gun and kicked it out of sight under an armchair.

Bernie removed his and did the same. Just in time, because three armed officers stormed into the room and ordered them to lie face down on the floor.

“What’s this about?” Sly said. “This is a private house.”

“Having a musical evening were you?” one of the police said. “We decided to join you. I’m Sergeant Brinkley from the drugs squad and I have reason to believe you’ve just taken possession of a consignment of cocaine.”

“Untrue,” Sly said.

“Shut up. We have a search warrant. We’ve tracked this operation every mile of the way from Prague. You may be hot stuff on the harp, Mr Gurney, but you’re no angel. We know how you bring the stuff in. Mike, open the top of the harp — known as the crown, isn’t it, Mr Gurney? — and let’s see how much is in there.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gurney said.

“You’re going to blame the driver, are you? We watched him at the Albert Hall loading the harp into his van. Got it on video. After that all we had to do was get down here and wait for him to make the delivery. Hurry up, Mike.”

“It’s hard to shift,” the officer called Mike said.

Bernie’s confidence began to grow again. If they’d really tracked every mile of the operation they’d know he’d returned Gurney’s harp to the Albert Hall. Clearly they didn’t.

“All right, the lid’s off,” Mike said. “Hang about — there’s nothing in it.”

Bernie, still with his face to the floor, smiled.

They asked Gurney if this was his harp and he said with total sincerity that it was. Blind men can’t always be trusted.

They brought in the sniffer dog next. The only thing that interested it was Bernie’s torn trouser leg. The tail wagged when it got a whiff of that.

After the police had quit in disarray, Sly cracked open a bottle of champagne. “I think some debriefing is in order now,” he said. “If this isn’t the maestro’s harp, what is it?”

“I, em, borrowed it,” Bernie said, digging deep for a plausible story. “I spotted the police surveillance at the Albert Hall soon after I’d lifted Mr Gurney’s harp, so I returned that one pretty damn quick.”

“My harp is safe?” Gurney said with relief.

“Safe in the Albert Hall.”

Bernie told them how he’d removed the other Horngacher from the museum.

“Nice work,” Sly said.

“Nice work? The man’s saved our skins. You promised me he was totally reliable and he is,” Gurney said. “I’ve learned my lesson. You and I can never do business again, Mr Small.”

“That’s bleeding obvious,” Sly said. “It wasn’t my end of the operation that the police were onto.”

“So all that stuff about young Rocky and the Royal College wasn’t true?” Bernie said.

“Hogwash,” Sly said. “Rocky’s in a young offender’s institution.”

“Why didn’t you tell me I was smuggling heroin?”

“You didn’t need to know. It isn’t that I didn’t trust you with a parcel of the finest Peruvian flake, just that I trusted you more with a fifty grand harp. As a music lover, you’d be sure to treat it with respect.”

It’s almost too much for one man, being the Prince of Wales AND the son of Father Christmas. In case this confuses you, I’d better explain. My Papa, the late Prince Albert of blessed memory, is credited with inventing Christmas as we know it. He is supposed to have introduced the Christmas tree (a German tradition) to Britain, started the practice of sending cards and — for all I know — served up the first plum pudding. Never mind that this is absolute bunkum. People believe it and who am I to stand in the way of public opinion?

The true facts, if you want them, are that a Christmas tree was first put up at Windsor by my great-grandmother, Queen Charlotte (of Mecklenburg-Strelitz), as early as 1800, and my Mama’s childhood Christmases were never without a decorated tree. It was only thanks to a popular periodical, the Illustrated London News, that our family custom was made public in 1848 and my parents were depicted standing beside a fine tree decked with glass ornaments. My father was no fool. The year in question had been an absolute stinker for royalty, with republicanism rearing its odious head all over Europe, so it did no harm to show ourselves in a good light. Decent British sentiment was wooed by Papa and it became de rigeur to dig up a spruce, bring it into the home and cover it with tinsel and trinkets. Truth to tell, Papa was tickled pink at being the man who invented Christmas. He started presenting trees to all and sundry, including the regiments. If you’re a royal and revolution is in the wind it’s no bad thing to keep the army on your side.

From that time, the festive season fizzed like a sherbert drink. “A most dear, happy time,” Mama called it. We royals were well used to exchanging gifts and rewarding the servants, and it now extended to the nation at large. Suddenly carol-singing was all the rage. And thanks to the penny post, the practice of sending greetings cards became a universal custom, if not a duty.

I was a mere child when all this happened and a callow youth when the unthinkable burst upon us and Papa caught a dreadful chill and joined the angels. As fate would have it, his passing occurred just before Christmas, on December 14th, 1861. I shan’t dwell on this tragedy except to remark that Christmases from that year on were tinged with sadness. As a family, we couldn’t think about saluting the happy morn until the calendar had passed what Mama always spoke of as “the dreadful fourteenth”. So you see, dear reader, we would wake up on the fifteenth and discover we had ten days in which to prepare. I mention this as a prelude to my account of the great crime of Christmas, 1890.

It all started most innocently.

“Bertie,” my dear wife Alexandra said in her most governessy tone, “you’d better not lie there all morning. Ten days from now it will be Christmas and we’ve done nothing about it.”