Chapter 25 Daddy’s Dead
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” said Robbie to Honor, who was spooning tea leaves into the pot.
“When you and Saul went through Jimmy’s stuff, did you find my pistol?
It was in a leather holster. Jimmy had taken a shine to it and pinched it from my room.
” Only when the house was searched did Robbie wonder about the gun’s whereabouts.
“Your war pistol? It wasn’t in Jimmy’s room. At least I don’t think so.” She thought back. “No, it definitely wasn’t.”
“That’s odd. I wonder where it’s got to.
If it was anywhere in the house, the police would have found it.
And wouldn’t they have loved to?” Although, he thought, if Comyns had found it in his room, he might have withheld it from evidence, as he did with Jimmy’s notes.
His reasons for doing so were pragmatic, Comyns had said.
Not for the first time, Robbie wondered if this was true.
A guilty thrill fluttering in his throat, he turned away to reach for teacups.
“You’d think they’d have come across it,” said Honor. “But I wouldn’t be so sure. The whole exercise seemed pretty slapdash to me. Let me ask Greta. She’s probably tidied it away somewhere.”
She found Greta in the second-floor bathroom, scrubbing the ring from the bath.
“So sorry to interrupt,” said Honor, offering obeisance as one always had to, “but you haven’t seen a gun lying around anywhere, have you?
It’s Robbie’s. From his time serving. He thought Jimmy had borrowed it at one point. ”
Greta removed her orange rubber gloves, hung them over the edge of the bath, and straightened up, one hand supporting her lower back. She seemed uncharacteristically abashed. Even sheepish, thought Honor.
“The one in leather case?” she asked.
“Yes, I think so. Why, have you seen it?”
Greta bit the corner of her lip. “I… I believed…”
“You believed what? My dear, no one’s accusing you of anything. Perish the thought. I assumed you’d put it in a safe place, that’s all.”
“I put in safe place. Under my bed. I saw it in Jimmy’s room, and it frightened me. He is not good person. I plan to tell you, but then when I come on Monday, he has gone, so I…” She trailed off.
“You thought there was no need to mention it. Understandably. So it was on that Friday, was it, before he moved out?”
“He didn’t want me cleaning in his room. Why? Because he had things to hide.”
I’ll say he did, thought Honor, remembering the bodybuilding magazines.
“But then,” went on Greta, “the pretty girl came asking for him, asking if he lives here. So I come upstairs to look for him and see the gun. Maybe he wants to kill us all, I think. Hide us in the walls, same as house of murder. So I take it and go home.”
“Gosh. Thank goodness he’s no longer living here. You may have saved our lives!”
Greta nodded, happy to acknowledge this accomplishment.
“Perhaps you could bring the gun back tomorrow? I rather think it has sentimental value for Robbie.”
A couple of days later, shortly after 11 a.m., the telephone rang. George, who was about to leave for work, picked up the line in the entrance hall.
“Georgie? Oh good, it’s you.” The voice was breathless.
“Venetia? Is everything all right? You sound—”
“Daddy’s dead. They found him this morning. Sorry to tell you like this. I’m lumbered with phoning around to break the news. Awful, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean dead?” George had heard this phrase in radio plays, usually followed by I just saw him yesterday, he can’t be dead.
“I know, darling. It’s hard to take in. He was found by a chambermaid at the Savoy. Shot, apparently. A gun by his side. The police are saying it looks like a suicide. There was no theft, no break-in. He was in bed. But I can’t see Daddy topping himself, can you? Why would he?”
“Well, I—”
“I must warn you, Georgie, it’s going to be in the papers.
We can’t stop it. The hotel staff have already talked to the press.
But look, I’m afraid I must dash. I’ve got dozens of people to telephone.
Can you catch a train home today? I’ll be there tomorrow.
Diana’s got a tea dance this afternoon. She can’t miss it.
Why couldn’t this have happened in a couple of weeks, when the season was over? ” With that, Venetia hung up.
“George told me the news,” said Honor to Comyns, “before she left for Hampshire to be with her mother. Then I read about it in the late edition of the evening paper. I realized I had to come clean. About everything. I’m willing to make an official statement.
” Through the windows of Scotland Yard, the morning sun burnished the Thames a fuzzy orange-gold.
She felt a sense of unreality, of observing herself from outside.
“I think of you as an eminently reasonable man, Detective Inspector, and I believe you’ll understand why I felt unable to be…
to be completely candid before. But now everything has changed. ”
Comyns’s expression was some combination of neutral and skeptical.
“Mrs. Wilson, I’m eager to hear whatever you wish to tell me.
As for making an official statement, let’s take one thing at a time.
You learned of the death of Lord Charles Mountford-Owen, the father of your friend and lodger Georgina, and you believe it has to do with Jack Shaughnessy? ”
Honor explained, in concise, even tones, that Jack was Charles’s natural son.
“It was the oddest coincidence when George came to live with us. It felt like fate, in a way. Naturally I didn’t tell her—it’s too unpleasant a fact to hear about one’s parent, isn’t it?
And Jack lived most of his life believing I was his sister.
It was only when the two of them began… Well, when I found out, I didn’t know what to do.
The only thing I could do was explain to Jack how he came to be born.
He was very disturbed by it. Well, of course he was.
Flew into a rage. At Charles for his brutality and abandonment, and at me for lying to him all those years.
That’s the real reason we had a falling-out.
You’ll recall you asked why he left in a huff, and I offered some silly excuse. ”
“Mrs. Wilson. Are you suggesting Mr. Shaughnessy is responsible for the murder of Lord Mountford-Owen?”
“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m merely apprising you of various pertinent facts.
I don’t exaggerate when I say Jack flew into a rage.
Such was his state of mind, I wasn’t surprised when he seemed to fall off the face of the earth.
Any ideas of fulfilling his responsibilities, of getting his life on the right path, were probably eclipsed by the madness that took hold of him. ”
Comyns nodded inscrutably.
“One other thing. George thinks it’s impossible her father would have committed suicide, as is being theorized. ‘I’ve never known a person with a stronger sense of self-preservation,’ she said.”
He nodded again, more slowly. “You said I’d understand why you weren’t more candid before. I’m not sure I do understand. I mean, given all that’s at stake. For Mr. Reznikov, especially.”
Honor found a hanky in her handbag and pressed it to the back of her neck.
The room was very warm. “Allow me, then, to enumerate my reasons. When Lord Mountford-Owen was living, to bring such an accusation against him, with no material proof, would have created a scandal. I’ve never wanted people to know I used to be a common little girl called Elsie.
I couldn’t let my first marriage be exposed, nor be sued for slander.
After all, a man in Lord Mountford-Owen’s position would be highly motivated to brand me a liar.
Also, I was trying to protect poor George, both from the knowledge she’d committed incest and from her father’s immorality.
” She replaced the hanky in her bag. “But here’s the twist in the tale.
George was sired by another man entirely, as her mother divulged not two weeks ago.
So that puts quite a different complexion on things. ”
“Doesn’t it just.”
Was that sarcasm? Honor wasn’t sure.
“Why do you suppose,” he said, “that Georgina’s mother chose now, of all times, to reveal this family secret?”
“You’d have to ask Lady Susan. Though I gather George’s real father is keen to know his daughter. Before it’s too late, as it were.”
“When you were a girl, and you became pregnant from this… this unwanted encounter, did you confide in anyone about the father’s identity?”
“Only one person, and I swore her to secrecy. I’m sure she’ll remember.
Orla Rosenfeld. She used to be Orla Quinn.
We worked together at a tea shop. We’ve lost touch, but I occasionally see mentions of her and her husband in the papers.
They run several West End nightclubs, and Orla owns a racing-car team. ”
Comyns noted down these details without comment.
“All right. Let’s imagine you’re correct and Mr. Shaughnessy has murdered the man he believed to be his errant father.
Why have several months elapsed since he found out?
If he was in a rage, as you say, would he not have acted on that rage immediately? ”
“I don’t pretend to understand the workings of my son’s mind,” said Honor tartly.
“I never have. But just because he had a motive, it doesn’t follow he had the means and opportunity.
Those might have taken some time to acquire.
George says her father—the man who wasn’t, in fact, her father—had kept the same suite at the Savoy for decades.
He stayed there during the week. For sittings at the House of Lords.
But Jack couldn’t have known that, could he?
I certainly didn’t, and at any rate I didn’t tell him to which room I was lured in 1923. ”
“Mrs. Wilson, I’m afraid I must ask, where were you between the hours of eight and ten p.m. on Wednesday evening?”
She thought about it. “I was at home. We were all at home that evening, I believe. Is that the time of death, then? It’s quite specific. I thought the body was only found in the morning.”
“It’s my understanding that hotel guests reported a sound like a gunshot at around nine p.m. The management, no doubt wishing to prevent panic, claimed somebody had let off a firework.
But the condition of the body, when it was found, suggested that death had occurred at least twelve hours earlier. ”
“I take it the gun has been dusted for fingerprints? Needless to say, I’d be happy to let you have mine.”
After a frantic few days of following every lead, Hilary saw no choice but to drop the charges against Mr. Reznikov.
Not that he was convinced of the man’s innocence.
Frankly, he could barely make head nor tail of the whole blasted affair, which wasn’t exactly a sterling endorsement of his investigative skills.
He needed a holiday, he mused as he walked through St. James’s Park in the softening evening light.
That was what people did in the summer; they went to the seaside.
But the prospect of taking a single room in a Bognor Regis or Bournemouth guesthouse, of making polite small talk at breakfast and trying to fill the long, empty days—well, it filled him with something approaching terror.
In any case, he couldn’t leave London. Not until this mess with Jack Shaughnessy had reached some form of conclusion.
It didn’t seem credible that he was still alive and yet had managed to fly completely under the radar.
But fingerprints didn’t lie, and the pistol on Lord Mountford-Owen’s bed yielded, quite clearly, several of Shaughnessy’s.
Another person’s, too. But not Mrs. Wilson’s, nor the dead man’s.
It was a British service revolver, a .38 Webley.
Not exactly rare. Privates weren’t meant to keep them as war souvenirs, but many had.
Why would you leave the gun behind, though?
To make it look like a suicide, he supposed—and yet if that was your plan, why not make sure the prints of the putative self-murderer were on the handle?
For whatever it was worth, Mrs. Wilson’s lunatic cleaning lady, Mrs. Kova?evi?, claimed to have seen a gun—or at least the leather holder—in Mr. Sullivan’s possession.
Then there was the testimony of the hotel manager, a Mr. Walter Edwardson.
A likable fellow, affable and silver-haired, someone for whom exposure to the full ghastly gamut of human behavior had, Hilary inferred, bred compassion rather than misanthropy.
Yes indeed, Mr. Edwardson confirmed, he had noticed someone fitting Shaughnessy’s description “loitering around” the lobby on the night in question.
“To tell you the truth, I nearly had him removed. I guessed from his shoes—those crepe-soled jobs worn by reprobates—that he was up to some skulduggery. I ought to have gone with my instinct and thrown him out. Although… but no, one mustn’t speak ill of the dead. ”
“You didn’t care for Lord Mountford-Owen?”
“He was very rude to the staff. The girls, especially, were frightened of him. When I was head floors manager, I instigated a policy of sending only male waiters with room service. I might be speaking out of turn, but I wonder if he seriously upset a young waitress or chambermaid, and her young man decided to take matters into his own hands.”
On Honor’s return from Scotland Yard, a letter was waiting for her. She opened it immediately and stood reading in the hallway. An odd expression formed on her face, both amused and incredulous.
Ben Yehuda 8
Hadar Ha’Carmel
Haifa
Israel
Thursday, May 28, 1953
Dear Honor (if I may),
I thought you might be interested to know that I was recently contacted by the Jewish Museum in London, who hoped to borrow Gila with Delphiniums for an exhibit.
The chap I sold it to gave me permission to pass on his contact information, so I expect the painting will be on show there at some stage.
It’s not the same, of course, and I know how disappointed you were when I had to sell Gila to someone else. But perhaps you and Mr. Reznikov should like to see it in person, as it were?
All my best wishes as ever,
Rebecca (and family)