Chapter 20 And So To Bed #2
“Certainly do,” Tapper grinned and, on a signal from Vigo, one of the constables cinched a pair of handcuffs efficiently around Flynn’s wrists.
Despite Veronica’s vigorous objections—at one point she jumped on the back of one of the constables, hanging on like a limpet until prised off by the other one—Vigo said, “Take this gentleman to Bow Street. Put him in a cell.”
Before he was frog-marched out, he managed to say to Veronica, “Go back to Lydia, tell her what’s happened.”
—
And so to bed. For someone with chronic insomnia, Flynn slept surprisingly well on a rock-hard bed in a spartan prison cell, although it did seem an extreme solution to getting a good night’s sleep.
When he woke, though, he couldn’t help but wonder if the universe was playing an elaborate hoax on him, determined to find him guilty of murder, no matter whose.
He jumped when the cell door clanked open suddenly and the custody sergeant said, “Get a move on. Your alibi’s turned up. You’re free to go.”
“My alibi?”
“Says you were with her all evening on the date in question. Respectable sort of person.”
Lydia must have come through for him and pulled some strings, even lied perhaps. He was expecting her to be waiting for him outside, so he was surprised when he saw who was standing on the steps of the police station.
—
“You look as if you could do with a hot breakfast inside you, Harry,” Maud Ogilvie said.
“I know a nice little café in Floral Street, opens early for the Covent Garden traders. I imagine a couple of poached eggs would serve you nicely.” All the time she was talking to him she was chivvying him along the street, a sheepdog with a lost lamb.
“They said you gave me an alibi,” Flynn puzzled when they had found a seat in the crowded, steamy café.
He knew that she had the ears of a discreet bat, but she pretended not to hear him and said, “I expect you need something to warm you up, don’t you?
Prison cells are cold places.” She delved into her bag and came up with a small silver hip flask.
“Brandy,” she said, passing it across the table to him.
“You never know when it’s going to come in handy.
Goodness, that’s a rhyme.” (She was in an uncharacteristically skittish mood.) “You can almost imagine it in one of those advertisements in the Festival Guide, can’t you?
Brandy always comes in handy—or some such—”
“Miss Ogilvie—Maud,” he interrupted, “how did you know I was in jail? Did Lydia contact you? Why did you give me an alibi?” He took a swig of the brandy and handed the flask back. She replaced it in her bag, which was as commodious as a magician’s top hat.
A waitress appeared, and Maud Ogilvie spent a considerable amount of time giving her order to the overworked girl.
“Two poached eggs for the gentleman, well-buttered toast, although I expect you only have margarine. Just toast for me, dear, no eggs. Marmite, not marmalade. A pot of tea, strong as you can, dear.” The mention of Marmite plunged Flynn unexpectedly down memory lane.
It was the one thing they were always desperate to get on the Railway as it was the only weapon they had against beriberi.
If they managed to trade for some with the Chinese vendors, it went immediately to the Medical Officer.
Looking back, Flynn realized how young those MOs had been.
Some just out of medical school. They had coped heroically—
“All right, Harry? More brandy?”
“No. Thank you.”
“Excuse me,” Maud said when the waitress had scampered off with their order.
“I am just going to powder my nose while we wait for our breakfast to arrive.” She disappeared through a door at the back of the café.
Flynn supposed the WC was out in the yard.
She had left her bag on her chair. She never left her bag—it went everywhere with her.
The bag was not clasped shut, its big, inviting mouth ajar.
He wondered if he was being tempted and couldn’t help thinking that perhaps she wanted him to look in it. He didn’t resist.
The contents were as he might have expected.
There was the pot of lavender balm, the hip flask, a little glass bottle of sal volatile, a handkerchief embroidered with forget-me-nots.
And—somehow no surprise at all—a gun. A dainty pistol, a Werther—just the right size for a woman.
She wanted him to find it, didn’t she? To frighten him, perhaps.
Or warn him. Perhaps even to reassure him.
The message, as with everything to do with Maud Ogilvie, felt cryptic.
“Goodness, that was quite a hike,” she said when she returned to her seat. She seemed to bring the cold air in with her. “Tea not here yet?” Nothing was said, but he could tell that she knew he had seen the gun.
“You lied for me,” Flynn said. “What did you say to the police?”
“Well, if you must know, I told them that we spent a very pleasant evening conversing together in Luigi’s on the Strand.
We ate spaghetti con polpette” (her Italian accent was suddenly perfect) “accompanied by a bottle of Chianti. You were kind enough to walk me home to my flat in Blandford Mansions—it’s off Marylebone High Street, should anyone ask—where we had a nightcap.
You didn’t leave until around half past eleven.
By which time I believe Mr. Stamp was already dead. ”
“What about Constable Hopkins—the policeman who broke up the fight between me and Stamp?”
“Recollections can vary. Even the police can make mistakes sometimes.”
“They might check with Luigi.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about Luigi. He knows to say the right thing.
And anyway…” She broke off to search in her bag again.
After a few seconds she triumphantly produced a piece of paper.
It was a receipt torn from Luigi’s order pad.
The date of Flynn’s encounter with Arthur Stamp was written on the receipt as well as “minestrone” in a scribbled hand; a total of ￡3.
6s and a curt “grazie” concluded this brevity.
Three shillings and sixpence was a ridiculous amount to charge for a bowl of soup.
He could have dined on caviar for that price.
But of course it was a theoretical minestrone, neither ordered nor eaten by Flynn.
A philosophical conundrum of a minestrone.
Schrodinger’s soup. For expenses. Sometimes a receipt was just a receipt.
Sometimes it wasn’t. “An airtight alibi, don’t you think? ” she said.
“You’re with the Security Service, aren’t you?” he said. “Who are you, Miss Ogilvie? Who are you really?”
“Oh, look, here’s our tea. Yes, just put the pot down there, dear.
Are the gentleman’s eggs coming soon? Good.
Shall I be mother?” she said to Flynn when the harassed waitress had scurried off again.
“Although I am, of course, merely an aunt. A maiden aunt, a somewhat neglected species, I’m afraid.
Although we can be a devious bunch. Never trust a maiden aunt. ” She laughed.
“I’ll bear that warning in mind.”
When the tea had been poured into the thick white mugs and Maud Ogilvie had stirred several spoons of sugar into Flynn’s, she said, “You know, it’s better for you not to ask any more questions, Harry. Don’t start digging another hole for yourself.”
—
They went their separate ways—Maud Ogilvie to get an early start on the South Bank (“So much to do before the King arrives”) while Flynn returned to Romilly Street, where he found Veronica and Mrs. Betty sitting on the doorstep.
“It really is time you gave me a key,” Veronica said crossly.
He handed her his own key and she unlocked the front door.
“Have you been here long?”
“No, got here just now. Lydia paid for a taxi to get me home. Said she had to go to work, selling oranges. Seems unlikely.”
“And yet strangely true. What did you do with the gun, Veronica?” he asked, following her into the living room.
“I’ll show you,” she said happily as she lifted a corner of the heavy rug that covered the middle of the floor.
She grunted with the effort of pulling it back but refused his help.
When the bare floorboards were exposed, she took a large, rather dangerous-looking penknife from her pocket (“Present from Uncle Gerry”) that he had never seen before and prised up one of the shorter boards.
“I reckon I’m not the first person to have hidden something here,” she said.
In the cavity beneath the floorboards, he could see part of a woodwormed joist and a tangle of old electrical wiring.
And there, amongst the dust of centuries, was the gun, still wrapped in his handkerchief.
“Clever of me or what?” she said.
“Read it in a book?”
“No. Uncle Gerry. It’s where he keeps his gun. Ivy doesn’t know.”
“And I’m guessing he pays you to keep quiet?”
“What can I say? A girl’s got to eat.”