The Stranger in Room Six
Mabel’s confessions via Belinda are building up into a possible nice front-page headline. Any stain on Harry Marchmont’s name will help, even if it’s through association rather than a personal involvement. Yet it’s not enough.
So I get one of my old contacts to find out where Belinda’s eldest daughter Gillian lives and follow her. Then I instruct him to ‘bump into’ her on the Tube to work and deliver a verbal message.
It works. Belinda comes knocking on my door that night.
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ she yells.
‘Inside,’ I say, pulling her in before anyone hears her.
She’s hysterical. ‘Gillian rang to say that a man knocked into her and said that her mother needed to “do what she was told” or something would happen to the whole family. Then he showed her a knife. She wanted to know what I’d got mixed up in. ’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said I didn’t know what she was talking about but she didn’t believe me. Now Elspeth is doubting me too.’
‘Then you’d better get Mabel’s secret out of her, hadn’t you? Or else we might just have to carry out that threat.’