CHAPTER 6
Mary closed the sitting room door behind Eastlake, thinking, Thank God. If she had to listen to another minute of his hand-wringing over Louisa . . .
She leaned her forehead against the doorframe.
That’s unkind of me. But there was time enough to worry about her sister-in-law.
Just then, all Mary could think about was Charles.
She crossed the hall to the stairs, changed her mind, and left through the front door, making her way around the side of the house.
She passed the yew tree. Its twisting beauty had always captivated her, and she’d sketched it more times than there were days in a year.
That morning, she shivered as she passed it, thinking of the man who had lurked among the branches, watching.
Mary rummaged for her key at the studio door before finding she’d left it unlocked after the hurried summons to the house.
Nothing and everything had changed. The coals still burned in the grate.
Light streamed in from the south-facing windows.
Her pencils were where she had left them, next to the sketches on her drawing table.
All was the same, except the cake of Paris Green paint was gone. The police had taken it away.
Mary slid a folder from the shelf and opened a portfolio labeled CHARLES.
Smiles and tears warred as she turned over sketch after sketch.
Weeping won, tears brimming and streaking her cheeks.
She came to the last picture, a watercolor sketch she’d done shortly before leaving for Paris.
There he was, a white-suited Charles in a summer straw hat, arms crossed, leaning against a low-hanging branch, smiling in a garden she’d painted using Paris Green.
Mary threw the sketch on the coals. Instantly, she regretted it and tried to snatch it back, singeing her fingers. Mary watched the flames eat from the edges, blackening, curling, and finally consuming the image. Then she turned away with choking sobs.
* * *
Upstairs in Charles Allingham’s study, the locksmith sat back on his heels and grunted.
“Ha. Gotcha, you bugger.” He slid the bottom drawer open an inch and looked up. “There you go, gents. Bob’s your uncle.”
“Leave the drawer as it is,” Eastlake said. “The police will open it.”
“Right you are.” The locksmith collected his picks and wires and sprung to his feet with the ease of an acrobat.
“Record time, Bert,” Armstrong said.
He polished his nails on his sleeve. “You coppers are lucky I never went in for housebreaking.” The locksmith held up his fingers and wiggled them. “In and out, and nobody’s the wiser.” He picked up his tool bag. “Cheers, gents. Hope you find what you’re after.”
After the door closed, Tennant said, “All right, Paddy. Let’s see what’s in that bottom drawer.”
O’Malley eased it open. It contained a stack of oversized portfolios, each nearly as wide as the drawer, six in all. O’Malley handed them to Tennant, who laid them on the desk, untied their ribbons, and opened a collection of erotic paintings and sketches.
The pictures in the first folder looked vaguely familiar to Tennant, painted in the style of Renaissance masters.
Pleasure Gardens, the second folder, depicted Asian women singly and in pairs, “entertaining” men in garden settings.
Voyeurs watching lovers and women bathing filled the third.
In the fourth folder, all the figures were males engaged in acts of sodomy.
The fifth group was the darkest: scenes of captivity, flagellation, and sexual domination.
“The quality of the illustrations is striking,” Tennant said. “They’re a far cry from the usual thing we see. This is artful smut.”
Eastlake said, “Surely a gentleman’s . . . private art collection can remain just that. The Obscene Publications Act applies only to the distribution of salacious materials. This is England, sir, where a man’s personal pleasures are his affair.”
O’Malley handed Tennant the last folder.
It contained images of women, alone or in pairs.
Some of the girls seemed barely out of the schoolroom.
In one picture, Margot Miller stretched out on a white sofa, one arm thrown over her head and a hand between her legs.
A second girl reached for the paddle at her feet.
Halfway through the folder, Tennant stopped. “Paddy, look at these.” Tennant spread three pictures on the desk.
O’Malley bent over the first two. “Franny Riley. She was posing for artists, just like you guessed.”
“I never guessed this. Look at the last one.” Margot Miller was the subject, and the artist had painted a green wrap thrown carelessly across the bed.
“Sweet Jesus,” O’Malley muttered. “’Tis a match for the one we found around Franny. Glittery green with moths stitched into it.”
“Franny?” Eastlake said. “Who’s Franny? Who in blazes are you talking about?”
“The murder victim in our investigation,” Tennant said. “Last week, someone dumped Frances Riley near Lambeth Bridge. And today, I found her pictures in Charles Allingham’s ‘art’ collection. The green dressing gown is identical to the one we found wrapped around Miss Riley’s body.”
“And there’s this, sir.” O’Malley handed the inspector an unsealed envelope.
Tennant unfolded a sheet of creamy writing paper. “It’s a list of letters and numbers. AG: 10, RJK: 10, WQ . . .” Tennant looked up. “WQ—does that pair ring a bell, Paddy?”
“The initials on the sketch of Franny we had off Mrs. Murphy.”
Sergeant Armstrong scratched his head. “What do you reckon? Lists of initials and payments?”
“Highly speculative,” Eastlake said. “I see nothing to interest the police.”
“Highly suggestive.” Tennant folded the paper. “And I find I’m interested all the same.”
The lawyer drew himself up. “I don’t see on what basis—”
“This is an active police inquiry, Mister Eastlake. It involves murder, poison-pen letters, possible extortion, and now a suicide.”
Eastlake opened his mouth and then closed it again.
“Gather up the folders, Sergeant O’Malley,” Tennant said.
Eastlake sighed. “I don’t know what I’ll say to the ladies of the household.”
“That’s for you to decide . . . for the moment.”
Eastlake’s eyes popped. “Surely, you’ll leave them out of this!”
“I have no desire to cause unnecessary distress,” Tennant said. “But investigations often uncover secrets that cannot stay hidden. Even from the ladies of a house.”
“But . . .”
Tennant nodded to O’Malley. They left Eastlake in the study, struggling to formulate a reply.
* * *
While Sergeant O’Malley headed to Doctor Scott’s Harley Street office, Inspector Tennant sought out Sidney Allen, Charles Allingham’s business partner.
The cabbie dropped Tennant at Amen Corner at the end of Paternoster Row, the heart of London’s publishing industry.
The row curved like a narrow canyon, fronted by soot-stained, three-story buildings turned dusky from the coal smoke belching from neighborhood chimneys.
Tennant spotted a familiar figure on the crowded pavement: Charles Allingham’s manservant.
Rawlings closed the street door of an office building and strode rapidly away, weaving around walkers, turning left at the first corner.
Tennant followed, passing a door with a discreet brass plate announcing the offices of Allingham and Allen.
The inspector trailed Rawlings through Queen’s Head Passage and stopped.
Just ahead, the man had halted under the sign for Dolly’s Chop and Ale House, stepping aside for a departing patron. Then Rawlings ducked through the door.
Tennant passed the pub, keeping some pedestrians between him and the window. He glanced inside. Allingham’s manservant stood at the bar, chatting with the man who pulled a pint for him.
The inspector circled back to the offices of Allingham and Allen.
A secretary in the outer office greeted Tennant pleasantly and politely.
When the inspector gave his name and rank and asked to see the company director, the man stiffened, and his gaze darted to an inner door.
He disappeared into an office and returned a minute later.
“Mister Allen will see you, sir.” He stepped aside to let the inspector pass.
Allen was a ruddy-faced, middle-aged man of average height, solidly built but running to fat. Pale blue eyes peered from under dark, spiky brows, and wispy, gray-flecked hair receded from his forehead.
“You’re here about Charles Allingham,” Allen said with a pronounced north-of-England accent. “A terrible business. Inexplicable.”
“Mister Rawlings brought you the news?”
Allen’s eyes flickered. “Aye. That’s right.”
“I thought I saw him exiting the premises a few minutes ago.”
“Mary—Miss Allingham—sent him along. Thoughtful of her, considering what those poor lasses must be suffering.”
He offered Tennant a seat and sat behind his desk. The inspector let a short silence stretch out. Allen was a twitchy sort, not from unease, Tennant guessed, but from boundless energy. He drummed his fingers against the desk, fiddled with his watchchain, and swiveled in his desk chair.
Not a patient man, Tennant thought. But willing to wait me out.
“I’ve spoken with Mister Eastlake,” the inspector said. “He tells me that you came to the rescue of a foundering firm. May I ask why?”
Allen shot Tennant an alert look. Then he hooked his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets and leaned back in his chair. “It suited me to play the white knight.”
“For practical reasons . . . or something else?”
“You’ve probably sized me up already, Inspector. I’m not what you’d call a clubbable bloke.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Too much of the North, aye man?” He shrugged. “I could barely pass muster—it was a close run even for the Topkapi Club.”
“You are a member as well?”
“Thanks to Charles Allingham. Charlie was a gent. Not a snob about things, you understand, but summat old school and all. You know the drill.” He pointed a stubby finger at Tennant’s red-and-blue regimental necktie. “Grenadier Guards?”
“Yes.”