Sally Spencer - Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street

‘I still think it’s a damned impertinence,’ George said.

‘I have something that I wish to say to you, Inspector,’ Virginia told Blackstone.

He turned towards her. She had on a dress with a flared skirt and a finely beaded bodice which swept down to her magnificent cleavage, and she was wearing silk flowers in her hair. She looked stunning, he thought.

‘Yes, ma’am?’ he said.

Virginia gave him a look which would have reduced a lesser man to a smouldering crisp.

‘I thought you should know that I have better things to do with my time than sit here listening to a man in a shabby suit expound his improbable theories,’ Virginia said. ‘And so, for that matter, does my sister-in-law,’ she added, standing up. ‘Come, Elizabeth.’

Elizabeth looked up at Virginia with startled eyes. She was wearing a day dress of finely striped cotton, and though it — like Virginia’s — had a plunging neckline, what bosom she had was chastely covered by the cotton blouse she wore beneath the dress.

‘Come, Elizabeth,’ Virginia repeated.

The other woman studied her hands. ‘I’m not sure. .’ she mumbled.

‘Now!’ Virginia said firmly.

And Elizabeth rose reluctantly to her feet.

‘It’s all right with you if we leave, isn’t it, Inspector Blackstone?’ Virginia asked.

‘It’s all right with me,’ Blackstone agreed.

Virginia shook her head, and her magnificent curls swirled around her shoulders,

‘That is a pity,’ she said. ‘I was rather hoping you’d forbid it, so I could have the pleasure of ignoring you.’

She walked out of the room with the stately glide of a galleon, while Elizabeth followed meekly in her wake.

‘She has some spirit, that wife of yours, Mr Holt,’ Blackstone said.

‘Yes,’ Harold agreed, in a suddenly subdued voice. ‘Yes, she does.’

‘How’s your head now?’ Blackstone continued, looking at the bandage swathed around the top of Harold’s skull.

‘Much improved,’ Harold replied.

Blackstone nodded. ‘Good! But then it wasn’t really that serious an injury in the first place, was it? Self-inflicted ones never are.’

‘Self-inflicted ones!’ George sputtered. ‘What the hell are you talking about? My poor brother was dragged across the fourth floor of Moore’s Dry Goods Store by two large men-’

‘No, he wasn’t,’ Blackstone interrupted. ‘Those men never existed. Oh, I know you had to have someone else to make the phone calls and plant the incendiary devices, but it would have been far too risky to get your accomplices more actively involved in the plot — because there was always the chance they might get caught. And, after all, they weren’t really necessary, were they?’

‘Involved in the plot?’ George repeated. ‘ What plot?’

‘I’d like you to think back to the moment in the Silver Spur Saloon when the kidnappers called,’ Blackstone said.

‘Why should I do that?’ George asked.

‘Because you asked me what plot — and I’m about to tell you.’

‘Waste of time,’ George said.

‘But you’ll do it?’

‘I suppose so.’

When the phone rings, it is Alex Meade who answers it.

‘ Harold Holt?’ asks the man on the other end of the line.

‘ Yes. ’

‘ No, it ain’t. Get me Holt right now — or the whole deal’s off, and his father’s dead. ’

‘How did the kidnapper know it wasn’t Harold he was talking to?’ Blackstone asked George.

‘I should have thought it was obvious. He didn’t sound like Harold.’

‘No, that’s not it at all. Alex’s problem was that he didn’t know the password.’

Meade gestures to Harold to join him, and hands him the earpiece.

‘ Yes?’ Harold says, with a slight tremble in his voice. ‘Yes, this is Harold James Holt. ’

‘Harold James Holt,’ Blackstone said. ‘Like all good passwords, it was simple and innocuous — so simple, in fact, that I didn’t recognize it for what it was at the time, though looking back, it’s obvious.’

‘This is insane!’ George said.

‘I must admit, you put on a good double act in that saloon,’ Blackstone continued, ignoring him. ‘You with your concern for your brother’s safety; him nervous, yet determined to go through with it. But that’s all it was — an act!’

‘So what you’re saying is that there were no kidnappers in Moore’s?’ George asked.

‘Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.’

‘Then what happened to the money?’

‘Interesting question,’ Blackstone said. ‘The disappearance of the money is crucial to the illusion you wanted to create, because it was meant to prove that the kidnappers were there.’

‘Well, exactly!’ George said. ‘I mean, there wasn’t an illusion, but-’

‘So it’s possible that, in order to make it disappear, Harold simply threw it on one of the fires that were blazing merrily away on Moore’s fourth floor.’

‘You’re saying that he would have been willing to burn half a million dollars?’

‘Then again, it’s possible that on the journey between the police station and the saloon you switched the money for dollar-sized pieces of paper, and that was what Harold threw on to the fire. I don’t know which of those two things actually happened, but I expect, now they know what they’re looking for, the fire department should be able to tell us in a day or two.’

‘So we took Father’s ransom money and either burned it or hid it?’ George asked.

‘Now you’re catching on,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘After all, why would you want to pay a ransom for a man who’s been dead for seven years?’

‘Dead for seven years! Father was alive four days ago ,’ George protested. ‘He may still be alive — and you should be looking for him now, rather than wasting time by persecuting us!’

‘The man in the bunker wasn’t your father,’ Blackstone said. ‘And once we’d realized that, a number of things that had been puzzling us suddenly started to make sense. For instance, we wondered why you would have employed such a lifeless creature as Judith to clean your father’s apartment, and, of course, it was her very lifelessness — her lack of interest in anything — that recommended her. She never questioned that the man she was cleaning for was Big Bill Holt. Bloody hell, he could have had two heads and I doubt she’d have noticed.’

‘The thing you did have to be worried about was the laundry,’ Meade said. ‘Although none of the staff had ever met your father, it was just possible that one of them would have heard he was a big man, and have started to wonder why the clothes he sent to the laundry in the basement were so small. That’s why none of the clothes from the bunker ever did go to the laundry.’

‘ What happened to his dirty clothes ?’ Blackstone asks Judith . ‘ Someone must have taken them away for laundering, mustn’t they ?’

‘ I saw Mr Fanshawe with a bag of his laundry, once or twice ,’ the reluctant parlour maid admits .

‘And Fanshawe, of course, was what we British would call “your loyal retainer”, bound to you both by his sense of duty and by the fact that you probably somehow found out that he was wanted for murder in England, and thus had him completely in your power.’

‘Fanshawe — a murderer! I don’t believe it!’ George said.

‘Now that wasn’t really convincing, was it?’ Blackstone asked Meade.

‘Not convincing at all,’ Meade replied.