Chapter 12 The Icing on the Cake #2
“Come along, Tapper—my wife is making my favourite for tea, shepherd’s pie since you didn’t ask. I would hate for it to get cold.”
They strolled off towards the Strand, an unlikely pair of flaneurs.
—
It was imperative to retrieve the incriminating scarf, but before Flynn had a chance to do so, Denholm appeared out of the entrance to the office and said, “Ah, Flynn, I was hoping to catch you. Apparently Mitzi’s demonstrating how to decorate the cake in the Parkinson showroom.
Thought we could pop along together, witness her in action. ”
“Now?”
“Yes, now. You need to keep an eye on her—she’s inclined to go off book. Chop-chop, or we’ll be late.”
“And here’s one I prepared earlier.”
Mitzi gestured to Cynthia, who shuffled forward like a reluctant ingenue entering on to the stage.
She was carrying a large, naked cake. Those eyes, Flynn thought, even from this distance they were remarkable.
If only you could mix and match a woman—Cynthia’s eyes in Lydia’s face, for instance.
Not that there was anything wrong with Lydia’s eyes, but with those jade gems of Cynthia’s she really would be elevated to the status of goddess.
Did Cynthia know who her real father was?
Flynn wondered. Hardly the kind of thing you could ask.
“Now, my darlings,” Mitzi said in her gravelly purr, “I am going to show you how to decorate your Festival Cake.” Was Mitzi a man? Flynn wondered, not for the first time. But then there seemed to exist the empirical evidence that was Cynthia Blinkhorn.
Flynn was trapped between Denholm and Archie at the back, while at the front of the room the naming of parts was taking place—finely ground almonds, icing sugar, egg white…
A frisson of excitement ran around the women in the Parkinson showroom—die-hard admirers—as Cynthia began to assemble little dishes of jam and cream and the obligatory glacé cherries.
Flynn couldn’t see what his presence could possibly add to the proceedings.
If Mitzi went “off book,” whatever that entailed, he doubted that there’d be anything he could do to stop her, and Denholm didn’t look like a man who was prepared to do battle with anyone, least of all Mitzi Blinkhorn.
Mitzi, dressed for the cocktail hour in an unflattering frilled and furbelowed dress that had survived the war, although only just, said, “First, my darlings, I am going to show you how to make marzipan, which is something I feel sure you already know how to do as only the laziest of housewives would resort to the expense of shop-bought marzipan when it is so easy to make it oneself.” She invested the words “shop-bought” with even more hostility than Flynn’s own mother would have once done, opening her eyes wide, her ostrich eyelashes fluttering in a pantomime of horror.
She seemed not to notice the little susurration of distress that rose from the audience at the accusation of laziness for their use of Renshaw’s ready-rolled.
“Nice time the other night,” Archie muttered in Flynn’s ear, with his usual aversion to unnecessary parts of speech. “Good spread Mitzi put on, eh?”
Flynn mumbled what passed for agreement.
“Remember that little proposition we talked about?” Archie said quietly, opening his cigarette case and offering one to Flynn. The case was gold and looked expensive, and, Flynn couldn’t help but notice, was monogrammed with initials that were quite different to Archie’s.
“Proposition?” Flynn puzzled, distracted by the sight of Cynthia producing a small washing-up bowl, into which Mitzi proceeded to pour icing sugar.
The bowl—scratched and battered polythene—looked very much like the one that he had seen Cynthia washing greasy pots in on the night of his dinner in Belgravia.
“I don’t remember any proposition being mentioned. ”
“And then it’s quite simple, you see. You simply squeeze your icing bag, and then with a little flick of the wrist…”
Archie jerked his head towards the door and said, “Talk—out there?”
Flynn mimed having a cigarette with Archie to Denholm, who seemed rapt by Mitzi’s performance, although more in horror than delight.
Once they were out in the corridor, Archie said, “Hear you’ve got yourself into a spot of bother, old chap.”
Mitzi’s foghorn voice followed them out of the room. “Cut a piece of greaseproof paper and roll it into a cone and there—Voilà, my darlings, you have an icing bag! Now drop a large rosette nozzle into the bottom of the cone…”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Archie. What ‘spot of bother’?”
“With the missing mademoiselle from Armentières, or wherever it is she’s from. Where could she be, eh, Flynn? They seek her here, they seek her there, they seek the French mam’selle everywhere. Cherchez la femme, eh?”
“I don’t think that’s quite what that phrase means, Archie.”
“Bit of a pedant, aren’t you, Flynn?”
“Not at all. And I didn’t have anything to do with her disappearance.”
“No? Coppers seem to think you did, don’t they?”
Did Archie have a “source” in Bow Street? Tapper, perhaps. Off his official leash. Or perhaps Archie had been commissioned by Vigo, charged with wrangling an admission of guilt out of him. Chummy up to him so that he would slyly confess, one tarnished male to another? Confess what, though?
“I hear they’re talking murder.”
“I haven’t murdered anyone, Archie.” (Had he?)
“Whip the cream stiffly, my darlings. It’s all in the action of the wrist.”
Flynn heard someone guffaw loudly in a very unladylike way. Cynthia, he realized.
“The thing is, old chap, they would need evidence to convict you. Might there be some, do you think? Evidence?”
“Evidence? No, of course not, Archie.”
“No? Not a scarf, perhaps? Little silk thing? Eiffel Towers?”
Flynn thought he might be sick. How could Archie possibly know about the scarf? Was it him who was responsible for its reappearance?
“Is it a souvenir of a memorable night? Although perhaps one that didn’t go quite according to plan?
Un crime passionnel, as the Frogs would have it.
Was your French filly strangled with it, do you think?
Or perhaps shot with a gun? Or stabbed with a knife?
Drowned in a bathtub? Hit over the head with a large ashtray? ”
“Shut it, Archie.” Flynn had previously taken Archie to be a fool, a duffer. Now he began to discern the sinister depths of the man’s character.
“Wouldn’t want the police getting their hands on that scarf, would you?” Archie said. “Have them putting two and two together and coming up with any number they fancy? Perhaps your fingerprints are on it.”
“What is it you want, Archie?” Flynn asked coldly.
“A favour. A simple favour, old man. You do me a good turn and I’ll do you one and—hey presto—you’ll have the scarf back. Can’t talk here, Flynn. I have to take Mitzi out to dinner. Meet me in the King’s Arms in Roupell Street tomorrow at nineteen hundred hours.”
“And then we take our glacé cherries and place them on the cake.”
“Best get back in there,” Archie said. “Mitzi’s topping off the cake.”
A throng of women swept forward as Cynthia began to cut the cake into little morsels that she then dropped in paper jelly cups. The cake was received and eaten with the solemnity of Communion by the women in the audience. Denholm, Flynn noticed, had slipped away.
Cynthia stopped in front of Flynn and thrust a jelly cup into his hand. He had never met anyone who blushed as much as Cynthia. Her fingers brushed his—on purpose, he was sure. Did she have a crush on him? “Thank you, Cynthia,” he said. She turned an even deeper shade of beetroot.
“Et voilà, my darlings, you have now seen how simple it is to create your very own Festival Cake and impress your friends.”
Flynn threw the little jelly cup in a bin on the way out.
—
In Savoy Court, the night commissionaire on duty was sitting at the reception desk, nursing an enamel mug of tea.
He held his Stanley Thermos aloft in invitation when he saw Flynn coming through the door.
“Cuppa, sir?” Flynn declined, making some vague, readily accepted excuse about having left “paperwork” behind on his desk.
The building was eerily quiet now—no echo of heels as secretaries clattered up and down stairs.
No clamour from the telephone exchange. No one worked overtime in the Festival Office—overtime was for factory workers, the “lower classes.” Perhaps there wouldn’t be so much panic about the approaching deadline if more of them put their hands to the tiller, especially Upstairs, where the business of the day ended promptly and was removed to the gentlemen’s clubs in Pall Mall and Piccadilly, to the accompaniment of gin and tonics and snifters of brandy.
Their office was always unlocked; no one who worked there could imagine that anyone in their right mind would want to steal anything out of it.
Flynn switched the light on—nothing suspicious about being in your own office, after all—and went straight to his desk.
He pulled the drawer open, poised to snatch the scarf and stuff it back in his pocket. Nothing. No scarf.
There was the usual stash of office paraphernalia: pencils; his pack of Players; a souvenir Skylon biro, minus its base; a knot of tangled rubber bands; a bottle of blue-black Quink. And absolutely no trace whatsoever of Delphine’s bloody scarf.
“Found what you wanted, Mr. Flynn?” the commissionaire asked as Flynn quickly made his way past.
“Yes, yes, thank you. Enjoy your tea.”