Chapter 12 The Icing on the Cake
The Icing on the Cake
Flynn spent the morning acquiescing to Mitzi’s prima donna demands as he ferried her around London.
Their first port of call was a photo shoot in Battersea, during which Mitzi insisted on her “good side” being shot, much to the irritation of the photographer, who was used to more compliant sitters.
Flynn was in mute agreement with the photographer that both sides of Mitzi looked much the same and neither of them was particularly prepossessing.
After Battersea, they were off to Broadcasting House for a ten-minute live segment on Woman’s Hour. Flynn had instructions from Denholm to remind Mitzi (to little avail, as it turned out) that she was there to talk about the cake, rather than herself.
On then to an interview that was to take place over an early lunch in Quo Vadis, where Mitzi seemed to be on intimate terms with “Leoni,” the ma?tre d’.
She gobbled up everything in front of her—lamb’s sweetbreads, a cheese course and gooseberry sorbet—and told Leoni the food was “exquisite,” while seconds later rolling her eyes at Flynn and muttering “terribly third rate.” “Of course, they’re cooks, not chefs,” she said to the browbeaten journalist from Woman’s Realm who was interviewing her—the same one who had been on the judging panel for the Festival Cake and who now seemed considerably less satisfied with her winning contestant, who had spent most of lunch pontificating on the dire state of British cuisine and how she was the only decent cook throughout the land.
Flynn, recalling dinner in Belgravia, begged to differ but held his tongue.
He imagined that Mitzi roused to ire would not make for a good digestif.
Once Flynn had dutifully paid for lunch—he had ordered only the soup du jour (a sulphurous asparagus) for himself and barely touched it—Mitzi snatched the receipt from him and stuffed it in her handbag, saying that she could set the cost of lunch against her tax bill.
He considered wrestling it out of her hands, but she was already speeding towards the exit.
He would not have been surprised to discover that on her way out she had swept the cutlery off the tables and into her handbag.
“The weary warrior returns,” Maud Ogilvie hailed him when he entered the office. “Any receipts for me?”
—
Free of Mitzi, Flynn set about the task of combing through the Stock List for articles to furnish a “Room for an Elderly Lady.” Amongst the long line of items that the (rather fussy) Elderly Lady required were an antique silver sweet dish, a lustre bowl, a glass decanter and a pastille burner (“Rockingham, preferably”), as well as a Royal Worcester tea set (“Chevy Chase pattern”).
She had a liking for Irish linens from Woods of Harrogate, and she had books and magazines “selected by the Borough Librarian of Hornsey and supplied through the National Book League.” He imagined she would like Trollope.
She was also in possession of a cat basket, a stuffed cat and a sewing kit, all of which Flynn had still to source.
She owned “Mappin plate tea forks” but seemed to have neither a kitchen, a bathroom or even a bedroom, come to that.
(“Sounds like she’s got a house on my street,” the Boy said.)
It was the consecrated hour of three o’clock and the Boy appeared with the tea things.
Flynn had just tracked down a stuffed cat from the ever-reliable Rowland Ward in Piccadilly—even being offered a choice between tabby and tortoiseshell and settling on tortoiseshell—when Maud Ogilvie said, “Do you have a bulldog clip, by any chance, Mr. Flynn?”
“I think so. In here somewhere,” Flynn said, opening the drawer in his desk. And then slamming it shut in horror as if the contents were on fire and in desperate need of extinguishing.
“Mr. Flynn, are you all right?”
For a moment he hoped that what he had seen was a figment of his overheated brain, but he knew the truth. Sitting accusingly amidst the usual office rummage of paper clips and pencils was Delphine Dubois’s bloodstained scarf. It seemed like a harbinger of doom. His own.
He had pushed that scarf deep into a dustbin outside a restaurant on his way home from the Blinkhorns.
Hadn’t he? Had he dreamt it? No, he had definitely wrapped the scarf around the awful unwanted sandwich that Mitzi had made him take away.
Who in God’s name had taken the scarf from the bin and placed it in his desk?
Had the ghost who had been following him retrieved it and then brought it to Savoy Court and secreted it in his desk?
How? And who would do such a thing, and to what purpose?
To silently accuse him? To frighten him?
Blackmail? A practical joke? He felt his brain careering out of control.
“Are you sure you’re all right, Harry?” Maud Ogilvie asked, tipping her head to one side like a sympathetic bird. A crow rather than a finch.
“Yes, quite all right, thank you, Miss Ogilvie. No bulldog clips, I’m afraid.”
With a dramatic timing that he may possibly have lacked when he was on stage, Denholm entered and said, “These gentlemen would like a word.” He stepped aside with a theatrical flourish to reveal two men waiting in the wings.
Denholm made a courtly gesture, indicating that they should enter the office.
“The long arm of the law,” he said in a stage whisper to Evans.
“Detective Inspector Vigo,” the larger of the two introduced himself.
“And this is Detective Constable Tapper.” Tapper was small and lizard-like and could have fitted twice inside the porcine Vigo, the buttons of whose chequered waistcoat, visible beneath his gaberdine, were being strained to accommodate his beefy girth.
“Biscuits, Tapper,” Vigo said pleasantly, nodding at the plate on the tray that the Boy was mulishly protecting.
“Chocolate bourbons,” Tapper said. “These gentlemen are good to themselves, aren’t they? We’re lucky to get a Rich Tea.”
“We just need a quick word with a Mr. Harry Flynn,” Vigo said. “Which one of you gentlemen would that be?”
Flynn volunteered reluctantly, “That’s me. A quick word about what?”
“Regarding a missing person.” Vigo made an unnecessary show of rifling through his notebook before pronouncing, “A French lady, a Miss Delphine Dubois.”
Flynn’s heart began thudding loudly, almost painfully. Surely only people guilty of something would have that kind of response. He thought of Poe’s story “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Literature was, as usual, unhelpful.
“Miss Dubois was reported missing by a Miss Frida Ibsen.”
“Also foreign,” Tapper said.
“But reliable nonetheless,” Vigo said.
“Ibsen? Like the playwright?” Denholm said, suddenly more interested in the conversation.
“Playwright, sir?”
“The Master Builder, Hedda Gabler, A Doll’s House. One of the great dramatists of the last century. Surely you’ve heard of Ibsen, Inspector?”
Vigo stared at him silently until an intimidated Denholm shrugged and said, “Oh, well, you know, not to everyone’s taste.”
“To resume,” Vigo said. “She was your girlfriend, I believe, Mr. Flynn?”
The Boy stepped in. “Not his girlfriend,” he said stoutly. “Just an ak-qwaint-unss. And she isn’t missing. She’s gone back to France.”
“Has she indeed? Yet there is no evidence of that,” Vigo said, addressing not the Boy but Flynn. “Nothing at the ports. Or at the passport office. The passenger manifestos on the cross-Channel ferries don’t bear her name. And so on. Nothing at all to suggest that Miss Dubois has left this country.”
“Upstairs says so,” the Boy insisted sullenly. “Everyone says so.”
Vigo looked around the office. “Do any of you know Miss Dubois?” There was a general murmur of reluctant denial. “Only you, then, Mr. Flynn,” Vigo said. “We just want to make sure that nothing untoward has happened to the lady.”
“Untoward?” Flynn could feel his blood draining away. They thought he’d killed her. The scarf in the drawer seemed to flare like a signal fire. Flynn couldn’t believe that Vigo and his sidekick couldn’t sense it. It was the kind of evidence that could hang a man.
He wondered if he was losing his hold on reality.
Suffering from some kind of psychosis in which, although innocent, he believed himself to be a murderer.
Or perhaps worse—the opposite, a delusion where he was in fact guilty but believed himself innocent.
He felt an unnerving spasm in his chest. Was he going to have a heart attack?
A heavy sense of inevitable doom descended. He struggled for composure.
“It’s just a routine enquiry, sir,” Vigo said, observing the struggle of emotions on Flynn’s face with polite curiosity.
“No need to be alarmed. You haven’t been accused of anything.
We’re not arresting you.” He looked around again and said, “Just finishing for the day, are you? All of you?” They all nodded mutely.
“Let us walk you out, then, sir,” he said to Flynn.
“Word to the wise, sir,” Vigo said when they were outside the building, dropping his voice as if he were about to impart a secret. “We’d prefer it if you didn’t go anywhere for now.”
“Where would I go?”
“Cardiff?” Tapper suggested.
“Cardiff?”
“Birmingham, Newcastle.” Tapper seemed to be mentally working his way up the map of Britain. “Glasgow?” he speculated. “We’d never catch you there.”
“Am I a suspect?” Flynn asked Vigo.
“Are you?”
“I haven’t done anything.” Somewhere beneath the pavement at their feet the silk scarf in his desk flared brightly again. It seemed eager to tell its story.
“You’re what we call a ‘material witness,’ Mr. Flynn. You were the last person to see Miss Dubois alive.”
“She’s dead?”
“Slip of the tongue, sir. All I’m saying is stay in London, Mr. Flynn. We’ll undoubtedly need to talk to you again.”
“So, I can go now?”
“No one’s stopping you, Mr. Flynn, certainly not us—are we, Tapper?”
“Definitely not.”