Nicola Upson - An Expert in Murder

As soon as he saw Penrose, Fallowfield got up and made his way over to him through a sea of desks and green filing cabinets. His excitement was obvious. ‘Good timing, Sir. We’ve just got the breakthrough we needed. Constable Seddon’s got through to the number on Aubrey’s desk – the one down south that no one was answering.’

‘And?’ Penrose asked, glancing approvingly at Seddon.

‘The number belongs to a landlady in Brighton, Sir,’ Seddon explained after a nod from Fallowfield. ‘She runs two boarding houses down there which provide digs for theatre people on tour.

Apparently, Bernard Aubrey had been in touch with her recently, asking her to confirm some bookings she had a couple of years ago for the cast of Hay Fever . He sent her a programme to look at to see if she recognised any of the actors – and she did. She telephoned Aubrey on Saturday night and told him.’

The boy’s excitement was infectious. ‘Who was there?’ Penrose asked urgently.

‘It was someone called Rafe Swinburne, Sir. She recognised his face from Aubrey’s programme, but the name confused her. You see, when he was in Hay Fever he wasn’t listed as Rafe Swinburne.

He was listed as Rafe Vintner.’

‘Rafe Swinburne? You mean we just stood there and watched Vintner’s son walk away?’ Penrose was furious with himself. ‘That wasn’t an overnight bag – he was packing to leave right in front of me.’ He could scarcely countenance the nerve it must have taken for Swinburne to answer his questions with such casual arrogance 246

when he knew how much was at stake, but it fitted the audacity of both murders perfectly. ‘It’s his father’s egotism all over again.

How could I have been so bloody stupid?’

‘To be fair, Sir, you didn’t know what we were looking for then,’

Fallowfield said, but logic only made Penrose’s expression even more thunderous.

‘Put the call out right away,’ he barked at Seddon, whose sense of triumph was fading fast, ‘and get his photograph in the next Gazette along with a description of the bike. It’s an Ariel Square Four – do you know what that looks like?’ Seddon nodded.

‘Christ, he could be anywhere by now on that thing. There’s no point wasting manpower at the stations. He’s not stupid enough to risk public transport, so I want every available car on the main routes out of the city.’ Seddon hurried off but Penrose called him back. ‘It was good work to keep on that number, Constable,’ he said. ‘Well done.’ He turned to Fallowfield. ‘Is Lydia Beaumont still here, Bill?’

‘Yes, Sir. She’s waiting downstairs to see White.’

‘Good.’ Penrose brought him quickly up to date. ‘If Swinburne

– or should I say Vintner – has done a runner, at least she’s safe for now, but I still want to talk to her. Will you tell her I’ll be down in a minute or two and reassure her about Hedley? Then go and see him again – find out what he knows about Swinburne’s background and see if it was Swinburne who put him up to the alibi after all.’ If Vintner did turn out to be their man, he thought, how on earth would Hedley feel when he realised he had shared rooms with Elspeth’s killer? ‘We need to get to the truth about that because at the moment it works for both of them.’

‘Right, Sir. Anything else?’

‘Yes, just a second.’ Penrose picked up the telephone on the nearest desk, but there was no answer from his cousins’ studio. If Marta had arrived and they were deep in conversation, perhaps Josephine would ignore the telephone? ‘I want someone to keep an eye on 66. Get one of the officers at the theatre to pop over the road and make sure everyone’s all right. If Josephine’s there, I want someone on duty outside.’

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‘What shall I tell him to do if she’s not?’

Penrose thought for a second. If Marta hadn’t turned up, might Josephine have gone to look for her? ‘Get Lydia’s address – it’s somewhere off Drury Lane – and send him there instead. Let me know as soon as you find her.’

248

Fifteen

Even late on a Sunday afternoon, Longacre seemed too narrow to hold all the traffic that wished to pass through it. Pleased to be on foot, Josephine hurried down the busy thoroughfare, and walked on through the heart of Covent Garden. At the end of the street, she turned right into Drury Lane and was relieved to be within a stone’s throw of her destination; what little sun there had been seemed to have given up on the day before its time, but it was more than the gloomy bank of cloud and encroaching cold that made Josephine quicken her pace still further.

Lydia’s lodgings were on the first floor of one of the artisan dwellings which had replaced the slums at the southern end of the street. Her rooms were instantly recognisable, even from a distance, thanks to a pair of typically flamboyant window boxes that underlined each sash with red and yellow wood and spilled their contents down towards the floor below. Lydia always joked that they were a way of keeping her hand in for the big house in the country when it finally arrived but, in truth, she had a gift for making a home anywhere; despite her mutterings about the impossibil-ity of putting down roots, her digs were always welcoming, elegant and utterly her, and Josephine usually looked forward to spending time there. But not today. As she crossed the road, uneasy about the reception she would get from Marta, she noticed an elderly woman coming out of the house and recognised her as the occupant of the top-floor rooms. They had met once or twice at Lydia’s spur-of-the-moment parties, and now she waved a cheerful greeting.

‘I’ll save you the bother of ringing, dear,’ the woman called, 249

holding the front door open. ‘I hope you’ve got your tin hat with you, though. It didn’t sound like a lazy Sunday afternoon when I went past.’

She was gone before Josephine had a chance to ask her what she meant. Perhaps Lydia had come home earlier than expected and they were ‘sorting through things’ as Marta had put it. If that was the case, it would be tactful to beat a hasty retreat but that didn’t solve the problem of Lydia’s safety and it didn’t answer any of the questions she had for Marta. No, she’d have to brave it, if only briefly.

She had barely climbed half a dozen steps when Marta’s voice rang down to meet her. ‘If you’d been where you were supposed to be all weekend, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,’ she shouted. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you since last night –

where the hell were you? You must have known I’d want to speak to you. And what are you doing here now? I told you never to acknowledge me when I was with Lydia.’

‘Make your mind up – either you want to see me or you don’t.’

The exchange certainly sounded like a lovers’ quarrel but it was a man’s voice, unfamiliar to Josephine and with a petulant quality which she instantly found disagreeable. Could Marta be having an affair? That might explain her moods and the mysterious flower, but Josephine found it hard to reconcile with what she had seen of Marta’s feelings for Lydia. ‘Anyway, your sainted Lydia isn’t here, is she?’ the man continued. ‘I watched her leave. She looks a bit peaky, though – it must be the distress of losing a close friend.’

‘Oh shut up and act your age – this isn’t a game.’ Marta’s words were defiant, but she sounded upset rather than angry. ‘I hate it when you behave like a child. We’ve got to stop what we’re doing

– it just doesn’t make sense and innocent people are getting hurt. I can’t live with it any more – I’ve got to tell Lydia.’

Even as she reached for the door, Josephine knew that the sensible decision would be to turn around and leave, but it was too late: carried forward by her curiosity and her concern for Lydia, she committed herself to the scene before weighing up the consequences. Inside the room, Marta stood next to Lydia’s small piano, 250