Chapter Fifteen
FIFTEEN
Inside the Curtis Green building at Scotland Yard, Parham led the two women to a small room in the basement level with a pair of speakers mounted on the wall and a small table with four chairs around it.
‘You’ll be able to hear everything in here,’ said Parham. ‘I don’t want them to see you. I’ll come back if I have any questions.’
He walked out, closing the door behind him, then walked down the hall to another room with a padded door.
He entered it without knocking. There was a constable sitting at one end, a police stenographer sitting at a desk at the other, and in the middle, seated behind a desk and handcuffed by one wrist to a bar bolted into the wall was a man with a sour expression.
Parham sat across the desk from him, then glanced at his watch. He nodded to the stenographer.
‘My name is Philip Parham,’ he said to the man. ‘I am Detective Superintendent at the Homicide and Serious Crimes Command. Is your name Kenneth Lonsdale?’
‘Yes,’ said the man.
‘You are being charged with the attempted murder of Anthony Danforth of Grenville House, as well as with arson and related charges for the use of an incendiary device in the commission of that crime,’ said Parham.
‘We have matched your fingerprints to some found on the door to the roof of that building. An eyewitness who was across the street at the time has identified you as having followed Mr Danforth into the building carrying a fishing pole and a tackle box, and we have recovered from your flat a set of sketches of the building with handwritten estimates of the distance from the rooftop to the window of Mr Danforth’s flat.
We believe that you introduced a petrol bomb from the rooftop through his open window by means of the fishing pole.
Do you wish to say anything in answer to the charge?
You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but whatever you say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence. ’
Lonsdale slumped in his chair, pounding his free hand on his knee. Then he sighed.
‘Have you ever done any fly fishing?’ he asked.
‘When I was young,’ replied Parham. ‘An uncle used to take me when we visited out in Shropshire.’
‘Ah, out on the Severn, I suppose,’ said Lonsdale, nodding. ‘I’ve taken some good-sized trout out that way, twenty-five pounds and up.’
‘Have you?’
‘I have.’
‘This sounds like quite the passion of yours.’
‘There are times,’ said Lonsdale wistfully, ‘when I am standing up to my hips in a cold running stream with nothing but the sounds of the water rushing by, the leaves rustling in the breeze and the birds singing to each other in the distance, when I feel completely at one with the world. I feel a tranquillity then, a soothing of my soul like no other. The pole, the line flying out from it, the fly tied at the end, become extensions of my being, reaching out for connection to another living thing. And when the strike comes, I feel an exhilaration beyond measure.’
There were times to ask questions, and there were times to let people speak, Parham knew. He let Lonsdale continue.
‘The war brought me to London, and I was cut off from all that. I couldn’t breathe the air here, I couldn’t hear my heartbeat amid all the noise.
And I could not find anyone who understood me.
I have been so lonely here, so intensely isolated in these vast, overwhelming, stinking crowds.
I would sit in my flat and tie flies, remembering with each one my past moments of happiness as they drifted further and further away from me.
I cast my lines here, and they landed on dead, stagnant waters and lay there undisturbed.
‘Until I met her. That very first date, I felt that connection. It was a surge of almost a primal energy. And she felt it as well, I could tell. We talked, God how we talked, and then she asked if she could see my collection of flies, the real work of my life. I took her back to my flat and showed them to her, and she took my hand as I did, and the next thing I knew … well, all I knew of heaven before was nothing compared to her that evening.’
‘This was Miss Lowle?’ asked Parham.
‘Evelyn,’ said Lonsdale. ‘Yes.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘Afterwards, she broke down and started crying. I was concerned, of course, and asked her to tell me why. She told me that she had come to London to search for the man she held responsible for her brother’s death, and that she had signed up with The Right Sort because she had learned that he was a client of theirs.
But then she had met me, and that changed everything.
She didn’t want to leave me, not even to continue her quest.’
In the listening room, Iris and Gwen looked at each other.
‘So that’s how she talked him into it,’ said Gwen.
‘She set the hook and he took it immediately,’ said Iris.
‘What did you say to this?’ asked Parham.
‘I told her that I would help her find justice for her brother,’ said Lonsdale. ‘She said that she couldn’t possibly ask me to do anything that would put me at risk, but I was adamant. I would have done anything for her.’
‘What was the plan?’
‘I had to tell the ladies at The Right Sort that the date had gone poorly,’ said Lonsdale.
‘They were used to that with me. I also told them I was done with them, so that would free me to help Evelyn. She came over every evening after that, and for most of the weekend, and we made love and planned how it would happen.’
‘Whose idea was the petrol bomb?’
‘Hers. It was how her brother was killed, and she thought it the appropriate instrument of execution. She got the address by breaking into the office of The Right Sort after they closed for the day. I came up with the idea of swinging the bomb through his window with the line and rod. It wasn’t difficult once I knew the length of line to use.
I followed him into his building, then went to the roof and peered down until I saw his shutters swing open.
Then I lit the end of the rag stuffed into the bottle, lowered it, and swung it inside as the flames reached the petrol.
The explosion detached it from the line.
I pulled the remainder back up, packed my gear and left the building with everyone else. ’
‘You could have burned down the entire place,’ said Parham.
‘I was going to call the fire brigade once I got out but someone beat me to it,’ said Lonsdale.
‘Good of you,’ said Parham.
He took a small envelope and poured out the odd feathery earrings that Iris had seen in Lowle’s jewellery box.
‘Do you recognise these?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Lonsdale. ‘Two of my prized creations. A matched pair of yellow and pink badgers. I was going to try them out for salmon in Devon, but Evelyn thought they would make lovely earrings to remember me by, so I gave them to her as a keepsake.’
‘I think she will remember you quite well, Mr Lonsdale,’ said Parham. ‘We will type up your statement and have you sign it. Take him away, Constable.’
The officer uncuffed him from the bar and guided him out of the room.
‘Need a break, Miss Martin?’ Parham asked the stenographer.
‘He was a talker, wasn’t he?’ she said, cracking her knuckles. ‘I’m ready for the next one when you are.’
‘Back in five,’ he said as he collected the fishing flies.
He walked back to the room where the two women had been listening.
‘You were right,’ he said to Sparks. ‘Both about the fishing pole and the man using it. What tipped you off?’
‘I tried to think as a detective would,’ she said.
‘As I told you at lunch, I thought of another way to get that bottle through the window, and once I thought of swinging it in by a line I thought about fishing poles and that took me to Miss Lowle’s prior match.
That was information we had that you did not.
And once I saw the fishing flies in her jewellery box – the badgers, he called them? – I was certain.’
‘May I see them?’ asked Mrs Bainbridge.
Parham pulled out the envelope and shook them onto the desk.
‘They are lovely,’ she said, peering at them.
‘Little works of art in their own way. I was thinking as we listened that if only he had bared his soul like that to us when he first came to The Right Sort, we could have done a better job of finding a woman who could have appreciated a man like him. We could have saved him.’
‘Maybe you’ve saved your other female clients from a man who is willing to kill,’ suggested Parham. ‘He and this Lowle woman seem to be a match made in hell.’
‘So you’re saying we did our job too well,’ said Sparks.
‘She should be down by now,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘I’m going back in.’
He collected the earrings and went back to the interview room.
This time, a WPC was sitting at the side and Miss Lowle was the one in the chair with her hand shackled. There was a large ugly bruise running across her forehead, but her gaze was alert, focussed on Parham when he entered. He sat across from her.
‘Is your name Evelyn Lowle?’ he asked.
‘It is.’
‘How’s the head doing?’
‘Down to a dull throb,’ she replied. ‘Thanks for asking.’
He told her the charges and read her the warnings. When he had finished, she sighed.
‘This is all quite ridiculous,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘I had nothing to do with the fire, or the attack on poor Tony.’
‘We’ve heard otherwise.’
‘From whom?’
‘From Kenneth Lonsdale, for one.’
‘Oh. Him,’ she said, her expression perturbed. ‘I was afraid it was going to be something like that.’
‘Something like what, Miss Lowle? He gave a detailed account of a conspiracy between the two of you.’