Chapter Twenty-Six
TWENTY-SIX
Early as Alec reached Scotland Yard that morning, he found Ernie Piper already at work.
He had prepared a list of people who ought to be interviewed a second time, neatly divided into groups according to their whereabouts, with suggestions as to which of the available sergeants should tackle each group.
“I wasn’t sure, Chief, whether you’d want me to take on some of them or stay here and keep track of stuff as it comes in.”
“On the whole, you’re more valuable here, Ernie, but as DI Mackinnon has vanished into the wilds of Yorkshire, I want you to come with me to see the Russians again.
We should catch them if we go just after lunch, don’t you think?
I’ll brief the men now, and then I’ve got some thinking to do. Send for coffee, will you?”
“Right, Chief.”
While waiting, he glanced through Ernie’s lists of names, discussed a few with him, and approved his suggestions. Coffee and several detective sergeants arrived at the same moment.
“You all know by now what we’re looking for,” he said as Ernie distributed their lists, which included brief descriptions of what was known of all those on them.
“All these people have been checked once and picked out for a second visit. If you receive any information you consider significant, report by telephone immediately after the interview. Speak to Piper if he’s here—he and I will be out for a while but in his absence a shorthand typist will be on duty. Is anything not clear?”
He answered a couple of questions and sent them on their way, then settled at his desk with lukewarm coffee and copies of all Ernie’s files.
Knowing the way he worked, Ernie had sorted them into three sets, labelled “possible,” “maybe,” and “unlikely.” The third was the most numerous, Alec was glad to see.
He started going through those, hoping as always to knock suspects off his list.
Happily, he was able to set three-quarters aside and add a few from the second set, to be returned to as a last resort. He was halfway through the third pile when Ernie brought him a couple of sandwiches and yet another cup of coffee.
With a sigh, Alec pushed back his chair and stretched. “I don’t believe I have ever in my life come across anyone who made so many people’s blood boil.”
“Dunno that I’ve ever come across anyone who seemingly set out on purpose to make people’s blood boil.”
“And was by all accounts hugely successful. No, no one over the age of fifteen or so. There are plenty who don’t care whom they upset, but that’s another matter. What’s this?” He started unfolding waxed paper. “The canteen’s best cheese and pickle?”
“I sent out, Chief. Best roast beef and plenty of it. It’s still raining. Shall I order a car to go to the Russkis?”
“If you brought your raincoat, we’ll walk. It’s not far and I need to stretch my legs.”
* * *
When they reached the shop, the OPEN sign was in the window. They stepped inside out of the rain, the bell announcing their arrival.
Its clangour went unanswered.
For a nasty moment, Alec thought he had guessed wrong and the Zverevs, with or without Petrov, had skipped.
They could hope to submerge themselves in the reclusive community of Russian exiles, or even go abroad where they undoubtedly had friends.
Their pockets full of gems, they would be welcomed anywhere.
On the other hand, with an elderly invalid travel would be difficult at best, perhaps impossible, and they must realise that if they lay low in England the police would find them sooner or later. Besides, they would hardly have hung out the OPEN sign and left the door unlocked if they had fled.
They waited a few minutes, then, at a nod from Alec, Ernie opened and closed the door again, setting off the summons of the bell.
This time it had immediate effect. One of the maidservants instantly popped through the curtained doorway.
“I’m ever so sorry to keep you waiting, sir,” she said breathlessly.
“Miss called me upstairs for a minute just when the bell rung the first time and I didn’t know which to answer so I goes up and tells ’er and she sends me down and then you rung again.
I been watching the shop, see, ’cause Miss is looking after the master, poor ol’ man!
His friend died last night and ’e’s took to ’is bed with the doctor. ”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Oh, he was ever so old, even older than the master. Wait half a mo’. I forgot to switch on the light. Be forgetting me own ’ead next! There, that’s better. Oh, it’s you, sir! The copper what come round before.”
“It’s Nancy, isn’t it?”
“That’s right. I’m to ask what you want and go tell Miss.”
“I want to talk to her. And Sergeant Piper here wants to talk to you, so you can stay here and have a word with him while I go up to Miss Zvereva. I’d rather not ask her to come down when she’s busy.” Without further ado, Alec went through to the back room.
It was in a state of chaos that suggested the prince’s confinement to his bed had been seized on as an opportunity for spring cleaning. Nancy had not been idle while waiting for the bell to ring. Alec stepped over a rolled rug and made for the stairs.
Miss Zvereva stood on the small landing at the top of the flight, her back to the light. He couldn’t make out her expression, but her voice enlightened him as to her feelings.
“Again you! What you want now? You know my father ill?”
“Nancy told me. I’m sorry.”
“Bah!”
“I shall not disturb him.” He recalled the difficulty of getting the cripple up and down stairs. “His bedroom is on this floor? Come down and talk to me below.”
“‘Talk to me.’ Always ‘talk to me.’ Everything I have said already.”
“No, you haven’t. You are concealing something. Come down.”
“‘Concealing’?”
“Hiding.”
“I have tell you all that is your business.”
“You will have to let me be the judge of that.” Alec turned and descended the stairs. Behind him, he heard slow, reluctant footsteps.
At the bottom, he waited to hand her down the last step. She almost refused the courteous gesture but at the last moment thought better of it and laid her hand lightly on his arm, for just a second. Then she swept past him and went to the ever-steaming samovar.
“You will drink tea.”
“Thank you.”
She was an extraordinary creature, tall, elegant, self-possessed. Alec found it hard to believe that, barely out of girlhood, she had undergone the terrible flight from Russia and the harrowing odyssey from country to country with an ailing father, losing her mother en route.
Her survival proved her strength of mind. Whether the experience had hardened her—to the point of committing murder without turning a hair—he couldn’t be sure.
Her back to him, she said, “What you want to ask me?”
“Please come and sit down.” He retrieved a couple of seat cushions from a corner and replaced them on the recently brushed-down chairs.
“One moment.”
The samovar gurgled. Outside, rain gurgled in the gutters and pattered on the paving. Through the gloom shone the lights in the goldsmith’s workshop. Petrov was at home. He was, of course, the next target.
Miss Zvereva handed him a glass of tea and waved him to a chair. She hesitated before seating herself in the other. “I am ready.”
“Tell me about Teddy Devenish.”
Exasperation exploded from her. “I have told all I know! And more—I have told what I think about him.”
“Tell me again. From the moment you met him. No, let’s start before that. Had you ever heard his name mentioned?”
“If I hear, I not remembered.”
“All right, your first meeting.”
She repeated the story of the tiepin and her unwillingness to set the large stone he wanted.
“I do not say is vulgar. One does not speak so to customer. I tell him is not fashion in present, and he say he will set fashion. He does—did—not appear angry, but now I believe was then he decide to pretend he is in love.”
“Why? What makes you think he was not sincere right from the beginning?”
She shrugged. “‘Intution’ is word?”
“Intuition.”
“Da. I feel it. Also, later is no reason for change. Fall in love, fall out love, is possible. To change from love to … to…”
“Spite.”
“To spite, this is not natural.”
Alec was far from certain that it was not natural for Teddy Devenish. If apparently genuine admiration could turn to spite, why not love? He found it hard to fathom a mind that could spend a good deal of money on works of art and then turn on the artists and wreck their current work.
However, his job was to fathom that mind only to the extent that it suggested the proximate motive of his murderer. Even that was not essential to the case, but it was necessary to an investigation more often than not.
Motive was not hard to find in this investigation, however. The wonder was that no one had bumped Teddy off sooner. The trouble was that too many people had motives.
Alec’s brief silence while he pondered did not stampede Miss Zvereva into inconsidered speech.
“How did you feel when you realised his courtship was a sham, a pretence?”
“Much relief, like I tell you before. I dislike. Father wants me to marry. Is not so easy in Russian culture for daughter to disobey father’s wish. So I am happy that Teddy does not want to marry me.”
“And your father?”
“He is blaming me more than Teddy. If you ask hundred times, will be always same answer, because is truth.”
“All right.” Alec dropped that line for the present. “Tell me about Mr. Clark. He was a friend of Teddy Devenish?”
“Clark?” She was startled. “Teddy introduce him. He comes … came again with Teddy, only one time more, I think.”
“He came only twice? Two times?”
“Only twice with Teddy. Then Teddy stop to come. Mr. Clark came few more times.”
“You didn’t mention this before.”
“I forget. Is not memorable person.”
Petrov had used the same word, Alec recalled. “His last name is Clark. With or without a final E, do you know?”
She shook her head. “Never I see in writing.”
“His other names?”
“Always I call him Mr. Clark. My maid announce him as Mr. Clark and Teddy call him Clark.”
What on earth could the man’s name be that was so elusive? “Please describe him,” Alec requested.
“Is difficult. You look, you see English gentleman, not … I forget correct word.”
“Individual?”
“Da. See gentleman, see good clothes—very proper but old, fair hair, good manners. Thin, not fat. Not tall, only medium, but holds self very straight. Face is … ordinary.”
“Colour of eyes?”
“Grey, I think. Maybe blue.”
“Moustache? Beard?”
“Not either. No hairs on face.”
“Age?”
“Young. I make guess: twenty-one, twenty-two. Younger than Teddy.”
“He went on calling after Devenish stopped?”
“Da. He, I think, believes he is in love, but is only because Teddy … Is hard to explain.”
“You mean he fell in love with you because he thought Devenish was in love with you? Perhaps he saw that you disliked Devenish and he hoped to win your hand in marriage to prove himself the better man? Something on those lines?”
“Is possible, I think.”
It was possible, and it would have set up a complex emotional situation if and when Clark found out that Devenish had cried off. “Tell me what he told you about himself.”
“He tell to my father that his brother is lord.”
“Did he mention his rank? Baron, viscount—”
“Means nothing to me. I do not remember.”
“Or his hereditary name. That is, he’s Lord Something-or-other.”
“Not Lord Clark?”
“Possibly, but not necessarily.”
She threw up her hands in despair. “You English say Russian names too complicated. Is nothing compared to English names. I not know name of brother. I know he was injured in war and never recover. He is invalid, like my father, and does not leave estate. He is … stingy?”
“Mean. The opposite of generous.”
“So. He will not pay debts of Mr. Clark when he spends more than his allowance.”
“Sensible man.”
Miss Zvereva smiled. “This I think also. To gambler, money is water.”
“Clark gambles, does he?”
“He talks much of racehorses. Also talks that will be rich lord some day, but I think gamblers are never rich.”
“Not often, certainly.”
The second housemaid pattered down the stairs. “Please, Miss.”
“What is it?”
“The master’s asking for you, Miss. He’s coughing something awful.”
Jumping up, Miss Zvereva said, “I must go.”
“Of course. Just one last quick question. Do you know where he lives?”
“Mr. Clark? No. Brother in country. Far from London, I think.”
“Thank you.”
“You will see yourself out, please.”
“Certainly. Thank you, Miss Zvereva.”
The maid stood aside to let her go up. Alec beckoned to her.
“You want to talk to me, sir?”
“Yes. Doris, isn’t it?”
“Tha’s right, sir.”
“Last time I saw you, you told me Mr. Devenish brought a Mr. Clark to call on the Zverevs. You couldn’t remember his christian name, nor the first part of his surname. I wondered whether either has come to you since then.”
She shook her head. “We talked about it, me and Nancy, but we couldn’t neither of us remember.
Funny thing, Miss called Mr. D. Teddy, but she never called Mr. Clark anything but Mr. Clark, even though we reckon, me and Nance, ’e was really nuts over her.
Like Nance said, she’s of them fem fatals like in the pictures. ”
“He went on visiting after Mr. Devenish stopped coming?”
“Yeah, for a coupla weeks. Then— Lumme, that was funny, too, come to think. Nance popped out to the post office for Miss. She saw Mr. D. looking in the window of the antikew shop next door. He didn’t see her, or ’e pretended not to.
Not that she’d give ’im the time o’ day after what ’e done to Miss!
Then when she come back, Mr. Clark turned into the alley just ahead of ’er.
He stopped by Mr. D. and they started talking.
Nance had to pass them but she couldn’t hear what they was saying ’cause they stopped talking when she was by.
But she was dead sure they was quarrelling. ”
“Even the best of friends squabble sometimes.”
“Don’t I know it. You oughta hear me and Nance sometimes! The thing is, after that Mr. Clark stopped coming round. Me and Nance, we reckon Mr. D warned ’im off.”
“Why—”
“Doris!” Miss Zvereva called from the stairs. “Come. I need you.”
The maid fled, pausing on the bottom step to glance back, wink, and wave.
He didn’t really need her answer. Nor was he surprised or disappointed that Ernie was no closer to an answer after interviewing the other maid downstairs. Why did Devenish do anything? Mostly, as far as Alec could see, just to be nasty, an accomplishment he had raised to a fine art.