Chapter 9 #2
The other woman sighed. ‘I’m sure you do. But the time has come to lay our cards on the table, Mr Thompson. When I was first approached by our mutual friend, Mr Fortescue, he explained your position to me.’
Harry did not dare look at Oliver. ‘Oh? What position is that?’
‘He advised me that, for the purest of reasons, you had investigated several crimes under the guise of an assistant to Sherlock Holmes,’ Inspector Wells said.
‘In the course of these investigations, it would appear that you have made a powerful enemy. Someone who has attempted to draw you out, but who also enjoys toying with their prey before they pounce. Someone who calls themselves Moriarty.’
There seemed little point in denying it. ‘Yes,’ Harry said simply.
‘Very well,’ the inspector replied. Crossing to the desk, she picked up an envelope and thrust it towards Harry. ‘Then this is yours. I hope it means more to you than it does to me.’
They had opened it, of course, and Harry had no doubt it had been subjected to a number of forensic tests; a shimmer of silvery powder still adhered to the envelope. With some trepidation, she withdrew the letter and began to read.
My dear Holmes,
RxP+
Yours in expectation,
Professor James Moriarty
Harry had to hand it to the author; once again, it was a perfect encapsulation of the dynamic between Moriarty and Holmes, a carefully considered game of intellect and skill.
It did not matter that the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle had never featured such a contest – the message was clear.
When she looked up, she found both the inspector and Oliver watching her closely.
‘It’s a chess move,’ she said. ‘Rook takes Pawn – check. He’s telling me that the game is almost over.
If I don’t neutralise the threat, my King will fall. ’
Oliver’s expression darkened. ‘By Pawn, I assume he means the dead girl.’
Folding the letter up, Harry returned it to the envelope. The casual cruelty of the reference had not been lost on her and it took some effort to extinguish the flare of anger it caused. ‘Yes.’
‘Despicable,’ he muttered.
Inspector Wells cleared her throat. ‘The reason I asked you to come here with such urgency is that we have not yet removed the body. I wonder if you might be willing to look at her, in situ, as it were. There may be something you see that we do not.’
‘I’m not sure Mr Thompson needs to do that,’ Oliver said, stepping forward. His eyes met Harry’s, and she saw they were dark pools of concern. ‘I cannot imagine the victim was known to you.’
As ever, he meant to protect her and, for once, Harry almost wanted to let him.
She had no desire to be confronted by a dead body, and certainly not one that had been waiting at least five days to be found.
But it would not do to turn away now, not when it seemed obvious that the young woman’s death was being used as a ghastly taunt.
Without knowing her identity, it was impossible to determine whether the victim had been a confirmed criminal or an innocent caught up in Moriarty’s web, but the fact remained that she had lost her life, while those responsible were still at large.
Could Harry continue to look at herself in the mirror each day if she turned away without doing her utmost to help catch them?
‘Do you need me to go through the tunnel?’
Inspector Wells widened her eyes. ‘Oh, no. Didn’t I tell you? The room isn’t underground. We discovered there was a false wall in the house next door. Two of my officers broke it down as soon as the body was found.’
Harry exchanged an astonished look with Oliver. ‘The renovation work,’ she exclaimed. ‘Didn’t Evans say his men heard strange noises in the walls?’
‘Yes. And one of them claimed the dining room had shrunk.’
‘The dining room?’ Inspector Wells repeated sharply. ‘That’s where the false wall is.’
Harry took a deep breath. ‘I think perhaps you’d better show us, Inspector.’
‘Follow me,’ she said. ‘Understandably, the Anderson family is not there at present. They’ve gone to stay with friends.’
As Harry had anticipated, the layout of 50 Berkeley Square mirrored its neighbour.
The hallway was less gloomy, the paintwork fresher, but the configuration of rooms was exactly reversed.
On the left of the front door was the room the Andersons had been using to dine in.
A splendid mahogany table had been pushed aside, the chairs piled untidily on top.
But it was the wall furthest from the door that immediately drew Harry’s gaze: a large ragged gash had been opened up in its centre, the intricately patterned gold and green wallpaper dangling in fronds around the edges.
Like its counterpart next door, it was guarded by an impassive policeman.
Inspector Wells nodded to him as he handed her a torch, then stepped back to give them room.
‘You’ll need this,’ she said, turning to Harry and Oliver. ‘Which of you wants to go first?’
Before Harry could speak, Oliver took the torch. ‘I will.’
With grim determination, he switched on the beam and disappeared through the hole. ‘There’s no smell,’ Harry observed, wrinkling her nose at the absence. ‘If she’s been here since the diamond went missing, shouldn’t we be able to smell something?’
‘Ordinarily, yes,’ Inspector Wells said. ‘But that’s the other thing that led us to understand she didn’t die here. The body has been embalmed.’
‘Embalmed?’ Harry echoed, feeling her forehead crease in bewilderment. Embalming was a skilled undertaking, performed only by those in the business of handling the dead. ‘What – how—?’
The inspector shrugged. ‘I can only assume it was to ensure the body wasn’t discovered before the thieves could escape the country with the diamond.
As for the how – our medical staff tell me it’s quite common for funeral directors to visit private homes for the purposes of embalming a corpse before burial. ’
Harry raised her eyebrows. ‘Even when the body has a broken neck?’
‘I imagine a lot of money was paid for the embalmer to ignore that inconvenient fact,’ Inspector Wells said, her expression darkening. ‘Or perhaps they were coerced into helping. Either way, they are unlikely to come forward if we put out an appeal.’
Harry could not fault her logic. ‘Finding out who the victim is might help,’ she said, as the torchlight flashed beyond the hole in the wall.
‘It would certainly be a start,’ the other woman allowed. ‘But I don’t expect they gave the embalmer her real name, or any other identifying details. They’re too clever for that.’
A few minutes later, Oliver reappeared in the gap, his face ashen. ‘She’s not much more than a child.’
His obvious distress caused Harry to swallow. But she had come too far to back out now. Waiting until he was clear of the hole, she held out her hand for the torch. In silence, she pressed the switch and stepped through the jagged opening.
She deliberately did not look at the body in the chair, knowing it would snatch the breath from her lungs.
It made more sense to assess the scene first, take in the details she might miss once her thoughts were clouded by emotion.
Moving the torch beam across the floor, she observed the sawed-through floorboards in one corner and the yawning black depths of the tunnel beneath.
The space was narrow, less than three feet across, and stretching the length of the original dining-room wall.
Far above, the ceiling was smooth and white, but it didn’t appear to bear a coat of plaster like its neighbour, which suggested the hidden room had been constructed before the plasterer had completed his work.
Other than the tunnel, and the rough hole that had been hacked into the false wall, there was no way in or out.
Involuntarily, she glanced at the girl’s feet, which were neatly encased in black Mary-Janes.
How had she come to be here? Harry wondered.
If it was not for the rope that bound her to the chair, she had the appearance of someone waiting patiently to see the dentist. With a sigh that caught in the back of her throat and threatened to become a croak, Harry raised the beam of light to play over the dead girl’s face.
Immediately, the torch tumbled from her hand.
She didn’t realise she had screamed until Oliver barged into the space to grip her hand. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
Wide-eyed and gasping, Harry could barely manage to breathe.
Oliver stooped to collect the torch, turning its light onto the body once more.
With an immense effort of will, Harry wrestled her thundering heart under control and heaved in an enormous, shuddering breath.
‘It looks like… I think it’s Polly Spender,’ she said, through lips that were clumsy and thick. ‘The missing girl from Southwark.’
Oliver swore. Inspector Wells appeared in the gap, her expression solemn. ‘Are you sure?’
Steeling herself, Harry gazed at the still, lolling head and summoned up a memory from Lady Finchem’s sitting room months earlier, when the maid had served them tea.
She’d been nervous, her eyes darting from side to side and her hands shaking as though terrified of doing the wrong thing, but Harry was certain the horribly lifeless features and mouse-brown hair she saw now belonged to the same girl.
‘Yes. I only met her once, but I’m sure it’s her.
’ She looked away as another cruel thought occurred to her. ‘P for Polly.’
Inspector Wells stared at her. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I assumed it meant Rook takes Pawn, but it could also have meant Rook takes Polly.’
Oliver nodded in bleak understanding. ‘You always suspected she was involved in the robbery at the Finchem house. It seems entirely possible she’s here because she got dragged further into that criminal underworld.’