The China Governess Read online

  At the moment he was trudging up and down the ‘contemporary’ rug, his grey hair bristling, his gaunt shoulders hunched and his long bony hands working together as he clasped them behind his back. A more unlikely aspirant for Luke’s hypothetical knighthood it would have been difficult to imagine. The superintendent perceived his mistake and began to revise his ideas.

  ‘Councillor Cornish?’ he inquired. ‘I am Superintendent Luke from the Central Office, Scotland Yard. This is a shock, I’m afraid.’

  He was aware of acute eyes, shadowed but intelligent, meeting his own questioningly.

  ‘It’s a damn bad thing,’ said a pleasant, matter-of-fact voice with a touch of pure steel in it. ‘You’re going to get to the bottom of it very quickly, Superintendent.’

  ‘I hope so, sir.’ Luke was brisk and hearty.

  ‘I know so.’ The voice was still pleasant but still completely inflexible. ‘You’re going to uncover everything about it and then you’re going to stop it once and for all before a great project is jeopardized. This estate is called a Phoenix. It’s not a municipal venture, it’s a social rebirth, a statement of a sincere belief that decent conditions make a decent community, and I’m not having failure.’

  Assistant Commissioners are said to use this sort of tone sometimes to senior superintendents, but since there is never anybody else present to overhear it, the theory is not proved. Luke regarded the man before him thoughtfully and cocked an eye at Munday, who was looking at the Councillor with an expression of gloomy contemplation.

  ‘Oo-er!’ Luke did not say the word aloud but his lips moved and Munday received the message. For the first time in their entire acquaintance Luke scored a bull’s-eye and had the satisfaction of seeing the primness punctured by a sudden ill-suppressed grin.

  The Councillor stopped trudging up and down. ‘Your sergeant has got a statement from Mr. Lucey,’ he said. ‘I’m prepared to vouch for the greater part of it myself. I did not spend this particular evening with him, but I can prove that I had his entire life story checked before he was offered an apartment in this new block and I can answer personally for the unlikelihood of him, or his wife, having an enemy. This is a perfectly ordinary innocent citizen, Superintendent, and in any civilized city his home ought to be inviolate. My God, man! Have you been next door yet?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Luke was wooden. ‘I’d like to visit the flat in the presence of the householder. That’s important, sir. If you don’t mind.’ It was another voice with metal in it and the gaunt, shabby man with the bristling hair looked at him with fleeting curiosity.

  ‘If it’s a necessary precaution,’ he was beginning.

  ‘No, sir. Just a regulation.’ The steel was still there with plenty of butter on top. ‘Shall we go? Perhaps Mr. Lucey would lead the way.’ Luke flattened himself against the eggshell-tinted wall and the old man was just able to edge past. His frailty was very apparent and as he went by the two detectives caught something of the bewilderment which engulfed him.

  He was so small that they towered over him and as they crossed the second threshold and came into his home it was they, the two senior policemen, who caught the full impact of that first unforgettable scene.

  A room which had been a comfortable middle-aged home full of comfortable middle-aged treasures, valuable mainly because of their usefulness and their associations, had been taken apart with a thoroughness that was almost tidy in its devastation. Yet at that first glance the one central picture alone occupied their attention, A very neat old woman, still in her good outdoor coat and best beehive hat, was sitting at a polished mahogany table on whose surface there were several scored scratches so deep that a triangular piece of the veneer had come cleanly away, while in front of her, laid out in a way which struck a deep unpleasant chill to the stomachs of the two experienced men, were the entrails of a pleasant old French clock which lay on its back beside them. They were all there; wheels, springs, hands and the pendulum, each torn and twisted out of shape but all arranged neatly in a pattern of deliberate destruction. The old lady herself was not looking at them. Her face was livid and beaded with sweat, her eyes were closed and her mouth had fallen open. Only her weight was holding her in position. Behind her another, much smaller woman, wearing an apron and bedroom slippers but clutching a handbag, peered up at them piteously through gaily decorated plastic spectacles.

  ‘She’s gorn,’ she said. ‘I felt her go. Just now. Just as you came in. The doctor will be too late – won’t he?’ She seemed to see the little man in front of them for the first time and a bleak expression spread over her face. ‘Oh, you pore chap,’ she said. ‘Don’t look, dear, don’t look. It was a seizure you see, she never came round.’

  ‘That’s right, Dad, come along out.’ Luke’s glance rested on the livid face which was changing unmistakably before his eyes. The neighbour was right. She was dead. He had no need to touch her. He slid his arm round the old man and swung him gently out into the vestibule. There, with the wide view of the city framed in the open doorway, they stood for a moment like a pair of pigeons huddling on a window ledge.

  ‘You and she came in together and saw the damage, did you?’ he inquired gently, still holding the old man to him as if he were afraid he might fall. ‘Anyone else with you?’

  ‘Only Reg Sloan. He lodges with us, see?’ The old voice was thin and hollow. The significance of the scene had not yet registered upon him. He was still worrying about small things. ‘We was allowed to let the room seeing it was empty; we got permission. I told the sergeant. Mr. Cornish knows. Reg got the permit from him. He went to see him – went to see him, I say, called at his house.’

  It was like a voice on the wind, something sighing through the rushes. Luke was unnerved by it. ‘Take it steady, chum. Get a breath of air,’ he said. ‘How long has this chap Reg lived here with you?’

  ‘How long? I don’t know. Two or three months. Before Christmas he came.’

  ‘I see. Recently. He hasn’t been here years?’

  ‘Oh no. He’s temporary. He’s walking the works and they asked me if I could oblige by putting him up for a few weeks. We got permission, me and Edie did. He got it for us.’

  ‘What do you mean by “walking the works”?’ It was Munday. He was half out of the sitting-room door, his hands on the lintels as he leaned forward to speak.

  ‘Well, he was learning the ropes. He came from another firm, you see. It was a business arrangement. He wasn’t going to stay.’

  ‘I see.’ Luke sounded dubious. ‘Where is he now, anyway?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ The old man looked about him suddenly. ‘He went for the police. He went to telephone. We all came in together. We’d been out to have one. Reg liked a chat about old times and we used to go and have a chinwag in the pub. Tonight we all came in together and Edie saw the clock all broken on the table and she’s upset because it was her father’s. It came from her home. Reg began to swear and went into his room – that’s the little one through the kitchen – and he came out almost at once. He said “Stay here, Len. I’ll go and ring the police, mate. Gawd, I’m sorry” he said. “I wouldn’t have that happen for worlds” he said and he went. Don’t you know where he is? Edie likes him. He’ll be the only one to pacify her when she realizes her clock’s broke.’

  ‘Yes.’ Luke glance sharply at Munday. ‘What about the neighbour?’ he inquired. ‘Could she take him along and make him a cup of tea?’

  ‘Yes.’ The woman in the decorated spectacles came round the detective like an escaping cat slipping out. ‘Yes. I’ll see to him. It’s the shock, you see. You come along, Mr. Lucey. You’ll have a lot to do tonight. A lot of people to see and that. You come and have a sit down and get ready for it.’ She put her hand under his arm and eased him away from Luke. ‘Make way for us do, there’s good people.’ Her voice, shrill and consciously preoccupied, floated in above the murmur of the little crowd. ‘We want a cup of tea we do. If you want to help there’s a woman needed in there. That isn’t a t
hing that ought to wait.’

  Luke listened with his head on one side. The brutality made him laugh a little.

  ‘I’m too sensitive altogether for a copper,’ he said to Munday, who was looking down his nose. ‘It was the lodger’s quarrel, then. That’s what comes of “walking the works” I suppose. Yet it seems a bit fierce for that sort of industrial dust-up.’

  ‘Fierce? Do you see those chairs?’

  The D.D.I. stepped aside to reveal a corner of the room which contained two good dining-chairs whose leather seats had been scored neatly into ribbons with a razor blade. ‘Like a joint of pork, isn’t it? The carpet’s the same. That’s no wrecking in the ordinary sense. No joyous smashing up for the hell of it. Just cold bloody mischief.’ He spoke with clipped fury and the Superintendent’s eyes rested on him curiously.

  ‘I don’t like the look of that clock,’ Luke said. ‘I’ve got a thing against trick-cyclists and head-shrinkers and all their homework. Let’s see the lodger’s bedroom. “Off the kitchen,” he said. Strewth! That used to be an electric cooker, I suppose?’

  They passed through the little kitchen where nothing breakable was left whole and yet where nothing had been overturned haphazard, then on through the farther door leading to the architect’s pride, a spare or child’s room. It had no space for anything save a bed and a dressing-chest but there was no doubt at all in either mind as they paused in the doorway that here was the centre of the storm.

  Everything a living animal could do to destroy and to desecrate bed and walls had been done. Scraps of clothing and the relics of a suitcase made an untidy heap on the narrow strip of floor. A canister of flour from the kitchen had been thrown at the looking-glass and lay like trampled snow over the remains of a decent blue suit with the lining ripped out which lay on top of the ruin of a plastic wardrobe.

  On the mirror’s clouded surface there was a message written with a gloved forefinger in the kind of printing sometimes taught in schools instead of handwriting.

  There were two lines, completely legible and entirely unambiguous, and yet sufficiently out of the ordinary in the circumstances to startle the two senior policemen.

  ‘Let the Dead Past Bury Its Dead.’ The portentous statement stared out at them, educated and shocking amid the filth. Underneath, in the same careful, clerkly script was a second message: ‘Go Home, Dick.’

  Munday stared at the messages, his thin pink face bleaker even than usual in his suspicious bewilderment.

  ‘“Bury its dead”?’ he demanded. ‘What the hell is this! Who was to know she was going to die?’

  ‘No, that’s a quotation. A piece I learned at school. Tell me not in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream, and the something or other is dead that slumbers and things are not what they seem. Psalm of Life, Henry Longfellow.’ Luke was talking absently, his cockney flippancy unintentional and as natural a part of his personality as his tremendously powerful voice which, even when geared down to a murmur as now, was a rumbling growl which set the shreds of the curtains shaking.

  ‘Someone else has been to school, eh? They didn’t teach him much except poetry either, by the look of this room. Poetry and thoroughness, and the rest is the same old uncivilized brute. The same old Turk Street special, cropping up like a symptom of a familiar disease. There’s no mystery now about “walking the works” anyhow.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘“Go home Dick”.’ Luke’s dark face was glowing. ‘The chap’s name was Reg Sloan. What else can it mean except exactly what it says? “Dick,” you old private eye, amateur or professional, go home. The past is dead.’

  ‘Good Lord.’ Munday stood staring at him. He had changed colour, Luke noted.

  ‘What’s on your mind?’

  The Chief Inspector stepped backwards into the kitchen.

  ‘I was thinking of the Councillor. If he gets it into his head that this is an echo from Turk Street long ago, something pre-war, and if he decides that a detective has been employed by someone unknown to dig up dirt about one of his precious handpicked tenants – any of the three hundred and sixty of them – then I’m going to have a job for life, aren’t I?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Luke said. ‘Also he’s quite an item, this literary character who is so interested in keeping ancient history quiet. Why is he only interested now? What could he want to hide which has only become important after twenty years?’

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Elopers

  IN THE EXPECTANT greyness which was only just less than the night’s dark a cock crowed twice. Instantly, from the rise behind the wayside station a second rooster answered him, and with this unearthly sound, the whole ritual of daybreak began.

  In the red sports-car which was pulled up on the lane’s verge below the station drive, the two young people who were asleep in each other’s arms moved drowsily. The girl’s lips were still against the cheek of the young man beside her and she completed the kiss which sheer weariness had interrupted before she opened her eyes. ‘Oh no,’ she protested sleepily. ‘No. Not morning yet, surely?’

  ‘Julia!’ The boy was all over awake at once, his eyes bright as the lids flickered open. He returned her kiss joyfully and glanced down at the watch on his wrist; his forehead crumpled and he sat up. ‘So much for our careful planning! We’ve slept for two solid hours and the train will be here in fifteen minutes. Oh hell! You’ll have to go down to the Keep alone. Do you mind?’

  ‘I feel as if I shall never mind anything ever. It may wear off but it hasn’t yet,’ she said blithely. She was kneeling up on the seat and he put his arms round her waist and hugged her. ‘But if I’m to get your car under cover by daylight I’d better go now, which is a bit heart-rending . . . you’re sure Nanny Broome really is a hundred per cent on our side?’

  ‘Completely.’ His voice was muffled as he rubbed his face against her chest with weary longing. ‘I telephoned before I collected you. Anyhow, she’s almost my foster-mum. She’s always on my side.’ He sat up to look at her seriously. ‘I gave her the full details. I told her what we had in mind.’

  She met his eyes squarely, her own round and grave.

  ‘Was she scandalized?’

  ‘Lord no. She was thrilled to bits.’ He shivered slightly. ‘And so am I.’

  ‘Me too.’ Julia was just visible in the cold light. She was a very pretty girl: not very tall, but slender, with fine bones and hair so dark as to be almost black. Her skin was thick and white and unpainted and her bright blue eyes and determined mouth echoed her father’s considerable personality. He was Anthony Laurell, head of the Laurell light engineering empire and youngest self-made tycoon in Britain, and one of the most interesting characters in industry. Julia was just eighteen, warm and gay as a lamb, and every detail of her cared-for, well-dressed appearance acknowledged that she was somebody’s very precious only child. At the moment she was absorbed, peering down into the shadowed face raised to her own.

  ‘Your smile is like lace,’ she said.

  ‘Lace?’ He was hardly flattered.

  ‘Decorative.’ She was entirely serious. ‘It sort of trims you up and makes you glorious.’

  ‘You’re idiotic,’ he muttered through his kiss. ‘Sweet and certifiable and I love you, I love you. God! I love you. Darling, I’ve got to catch this dreary train back to London but tonight . . .’ His voice broke with a disarming helplessness which pinked them both like a sword. ‘Tonight I’ll come back and find you and damn everybody else in the world.’ He pushed her firmly away and climbed out of the car.

  ‘Timothy.’

  ‘Hello?’ He swung round in the fast growing light and she saw him for the first time all over again. He had a rangy body, a distinctive, characterful face, grey arrogant eyes and a wide thin mouth whose lines could curl and broaden like copperplate handwriting. He was twenty-two and all the panoply of masculine physical charm which had earned him a host of admiring contemporaries, even in the Oxford where they both were students, was at its
freshest and best. To see all this giddy power and splendour helpless before her was a part of the enchantment which bound her and she caught her breath before it.

  ‘I don’t want you to go back to London!’

  ‘Nor do I, lady! But I’ve got to. I’ve got to see your old man and have it out with him. His trip to Ireland made it possible for me to get you away and safe here while I talk, but we can’t just clear out into the blue.’

  ‘Why not?’ She was coaxing. ‘Honestly, I don’t care any more about anything in the world except being with you. Two months ago I’d rather have committed suicide than upset Daddy or get in the newspapers. Now I just can’t care.’

  The young man put his hands on either side of her face and looked down at her like a child with a treasure.

  ‘You go on thinking just like that and leave the rest to me,’ he said earnestly. ‘But I can’t face the thought of you and me being turned into a nice Sunday “read” for half-wits. It was foolhardy and inconsiderate of your old man to call the whole thing off suddenly, just when his own invitations to the engagement “do” were out, and he must have known that the gossip hounds would be down on us like a blight. I must talk to him. He can’t have so much against me.’

  ‘He hasn’t. I told you I don’t know why he suddenly vetoed the marriage, but he liked you and he liked your background and was impressed by the degree and the sports record and . . .’

  ‘Then why? For God’s sake?’

  ‘It was something to do with a letter he got from Miss Kinnit.’

  ‘From Aunt Alison?’ He was staring at her. ‘Do you know what was in it?’

  ‘No, or I’d have told you. I only knew it came. I didn’t mean to mention it.’ The dusky colour appeared in her cheeks. ‘She was so nice to me. I thought she approved.’

  ‘She does. She’s a funny, cold old thing but terribly kind – after all she and Eustace are my only family and she was delighted about you. They keep teasing me about you being the deb of the year. This must be some completely idiotic misunderstanding. I’ll go and put it right. Wait at the Keep and love me.’