Help From The Baron Read online

  Simon Lessing and Susan Pengelly had been to see her already this morning. Susan, Mannering knew, had brought an offer of hospitality; she could rig up an extra bed. At least there was no need to dissuade Francesca from that. Simon hadn’t said anything about Joy, as far as Mannering knew; but Francesca wasn’t telling him everything. Yesterday she had been too dazed to show any emotion, now . . .

  The door opened.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Mannering,” the sister said, “but Superintendent Bristow is here.”

  Mannering stood up. “Well, why not?”

  “He’d like a word with you privately.”

  “Oh.” Mannering smiled at Francesca, and offered his hand. Hers was very cold. “Don’t forget, if there’s anything at all I can do, I will.”

  “I’m sure you will,” she said mechanically.

  He went out, carrying a mental picture of the girl. Some people would find her exceedingly lovely, but he didn’t think much about her looks. Her manner, her thoughts and her fears mattered. Was she thinking that he was involved? Had ardent, impetuous Simon told her of the canard? Or had Susan told her, with sweet malevolence, that she was sure that Mannering had those jewels, and was her father’s enemy.

  He felt sure she had been told something to upset her.

  Bristow was in the sister’s office; alone, smoking, rubbing his right eye. He stood by the window overlooking the street and, if he turned his head, he could see a stretch of the River Thames. It was sunlit that morning, for the day was mild and bright. Outside, people were walking with a spring in their step.

  The sister closed the door on them.

  “Hallo, Bill,” said Mannering. He looked bruised but much better; the full night’s sleep and Lorna’s ministrations had served him well. He could even think clearly. “Bad night?”

  “I had a hell of a night,” Bristow growled. “What have you been saying to that girl?”

  “Offering to put her up at the flat.”

  “Very considerate, aren’t you? Anxious to be pally.”

  “Helpful.”

  “Why?”

  “Bill,” said Mannering, keeping his hands in his pockets; they fidgeted almost of their own accord, as if they would like to tackle Bristow, “I know that the Yard’s stretched pretty thin. None of you has time to do all you want to, and you haven’t enough men to go round. But you won’t get anywhere if you don’t catch up on sleep.”

  Bristow glowered: “We’d be better off if we didn’t have to waste so much time on . . .” He didn’t finish, gulped, stubbed out a cigarette and - without realising it, Mannering felt sure, took another from a packet of twenty Players. “Did you telephone us about that body at Lisle’s office?”

  The news wasn’t in the newspaper.

  Mannering looked shocked; he didn’t overdo it, because Bristow would be very alive to excess. He waited for a moment, and then said quietly: “Are you serious?”

  “You know damned well I am!”

  Mannering said slowly: “Was it Lisle?”

  “Isn’t that what you’ve been talking to the girl about?”

  “Bill,” said Mannering heavily, “I didn’t know about it. If I had . . .” He paused, moved, lit a match and held it out. Bristow took the light with a grunt. “I don’t get it. A body - you didn’t say Lisle. Was it Lisle?”

  Bristow said: “I don’t know. I think so.”

  “Why can’t you be sure?”

  “Someone meant it to be doubtful,” Bristow said. “It wasn’t a nice sight.” Mannering just said: “Oh.”

  “Know anyone else who knew Lisle intimately?” Bristow demanded.

  Mannering saw the implications of that, and didn’t like them.

  “No,” he said slowly. “Only Francesca.”

  “Hell of a job,” muttered Bristow, “but I suppose I’d better get it over. The doctor and the sister seem to think she can stand it. Had any more trouble?”

  “No.”

  “Seen Lessing?”

  “No.”

  “His sister’s still missing,” Bristow growled. “I’ve put a call out for her.” He stubbed out the cigarette. “And don’t forget what I told you, if you have those Fioras, you’re asking for trouble, and I’ll make sure that you get it.”

  Mannering didn’t speak.

  Bristow went out.

  Bristow reached the street, with Francesca Lisle by his side. She was very pale indeed, now, and walked as if she weren’t quite sure where the next step would take her. Bristow’s car was at the kerb, not far from Mannering’s; Mannering got out of the Rolls-Bentley and came up.

  “Going to get it over at once.” Bristow was gruff.

  “Where?”

  “Cannon Row.”

  “I’ll ask Lorna to go over,” Mannering said.

  “Yes, be a good idea.” That was evidence of a thaw.

  Francesca didn’t seem, to hear any of this. She stood listlessly by Bristow’s side. Listlessly? Mannering was impressed, as he had been earlier by her obvious fear, but was quite sure that it wasn’t fear for herself. Someone or something had frightened her, and Bristow’s news had frightened her still more. What had Bristow said? There wasn’t much choice for the Yard man or anyone else; he must have told her there was a dead man with a mutilated head and face, and that she was to try to recognise the body.

  “This is the car, Miss Lisle,” Bristow said, and then swung round on Mannering, who prepared for another outburst. He could not have been wider off the mark. “Come along with us, will you? Be a help to Miss Lisle. We can have a message sent to Lorna from the car radio.”

  The request was an olive branch in itself, as well as a sign of the resurgence of the human being in Bristow.

  “Thanks,” said Mannering.

  He handed the girl into the car, and climbed in after her. Bristow took the wheel. No one else came. Bristow slid the car into the stream of traffic, and then said in an unfamiliar, gruff voice: “It’ll help us both, Miss Lisle, if you’ll try to remember any - any distinguishing marks on . . .” He didn’t finish, but swerved sharply past a cyclist who seemed to be quite oblivious of his carelessness. “I mean, birthmarks. Or say a mole, or . . .”

  The girl didn’t answer.

  Mannering said very quietly: “I’ve a small mole just behind my right ear.” He touched his ear. “And a scar on my right forearm, another - a nasty one - on my left shoulder. That’s the kind of thing we mean.”

  Francesca stared straight out of the window, the tears glistening in her eyes. Bristow cleared his throat, ready to talk again, and Mannering said “All right, Bill.”

  Bristow didn’t speak.

  Francesca said huskily: “He had - he has a birthmark on his right shoulder, a kind of moth. It looks like a small brown moth, or butterfly. And . . .”

  She couldn’t go on for some minutes. They were drawing nearer Scotland Yard and the nearby police-station with its morgue and its terror.

  Suddenly, she burst out: “He burned his wrist a little while ago, and he had an operation for - for varico . . .”

  She broke off, trembling violently. She seemed oblivious of the fact that she was gripping Mannering’s hand.

  “He can’t be dead,” she choked. “He can’t be, it must be someone else.”

  The morgue was big and gloomy, and struck cold; it had to be kept cold. The windows were all of thick, frosted glass. Over the stone slabs, where bodies lay until the police had finished with them, were electric lights which, when switched on, were very bright. There was no room for sentiment or squeamishness here. Some of the men and women whom Sergeant Worraby fished out of the Thames lay until some sniffing or tearful wife - or son or daughter, father or mother - came to look on a lifeless face and to nod, in real or pretended grief. It was the nearest morgue to Scotland Yard, too, a stone’s throw away. The morgue-keeper had been known to boast, if not to gloat, that all the best corpses came here.

  Bristow opened the door.

  Francesca stepped through, with Ma
nnering close behind her. She put a hand on Mannering’s arm, her first gesture of defensiveness. The light was on over a shrouded figure. An attendant stood at the head of the corpse, hands by his sides, demeanour almost one of boredom, There was only the one corpse in the cold room.

  A policewoman stood with Francesca.

  Bristow said: “As I said in the car, Miss Lisle, I want you to look at the scars. Tell me if you recognise them. You know how important it is, don’t you?”

  She whispered: “Yes.”

  “It won’t take a minute.”

  Mannering felt the tightness of the girl’s fingers. Obviously every step she took was an ordeal. He thought of the journey from the nursing home, and Bristow’s gruff questions, his almost despairing attempt to be matter-of-fact. Bristow hadn’t said a word about it, but managed to exchange glances with Mannering, telling Mannering the significance of the scars and marks.

  “I’m so frightened,” Francesca said, and her words came like little pellets of ice. She clung to Mannering’s arm. “It couldn’t be . . .”

  Mannering put his other arm round her. Bristow took a corner of the sheet. The girl was trembling violently. It had to be done, and it was damnable; torture and torment together.

  The dead man’s head was bandaged.

  The girl’s teeth chattered, and she shook violently. Mannering held her much as he had held Lorna the night before, but to give strength, not to seek it.

  The corpse was lying face downwards. The powerful right shoulder showed and, beneath it, the butterfly scar. Bristow shot his questioning look into Francesca’s eyes; eyes which were glistening with bitter tears.

  “Have you ever seen this before, Miss Lisle?”

  She tried to speak, couldn’t get the word out, tried again and said, sobbing: “Yes.”

  Bristow turned the cloth back, took the limp arm quite reverently, held the wrist and raised it to the light. The scar looked very red.

  “Have you?” he asked.

  “Oh, no, no, no!” cried Francesca. “He can’t be dead, he can’t be!”

  Bristow steeled himself to ask more questions.

  18: A MEASURE OF AGREEMENT

  Mannering watched the taxi disappearing. He caught a glimpse of Lorna’s face as she glanced round towards him. Then she disappeared along the Embankment. A police car was just behind her, and other police had already gone ahead. In ten minutes Lorna would be in Chelsea, helping Francesca up the stairs to the studio flat. It wasn’t a task she relished, but she would do it better than most.

  The policewoman was also in the taxi.

  Bristow was standing with Mannering, at the foot of the steps of the new building which housed the C.I.D. He still had those smudgy eyes, and looked as if he would break into a yawn at any moment. Mannering turned to look at him.

  Bristow said: “We’re so short-handed that we’re days behind with some jobs, and watching her is going to cost three men. I hope it’s worth it.” He brooded. “I wish I knew why Lisle was killed, too.”

  Mannering said: “Why did you turn sour on me?”

  Bristow was in the mood to answer.

  “Because I didn’t like what you did.” His tone hardened, for Bristow his manner became almost trucculent,

  “I still don’t. Just because you came in useful . . .” He broke off.

  What he meant was that he had been in a fix, and had known of no one more likely to help than Mannering. There was a moment of complete understanding between the two men, when their defences were right down.

  Bristow shrugged and turned away, leading the way towards the main hall.

  “You coming up?”

  “Yes,” Mannering said. He followed the Yard man into the hall, up the two flights of stairs, along a wide passage and into his office. This was long and narrow, with windows broadside on the Embankment, offering a view of Westminster Bridge, the sluggish old river and the squat mass of London County Hall. The sun still shone, the sky was blue and the Thames reflected it, looking calm, peaceful and benevolent - as if it could never take a man or woman or child and hold on with cold indifference until death came.

  Francesca had been pulled out of its embrace. Now she was in the tight hold of grief.

  There were two desks, but no one was in the office. Bristow flung his hat towards a peg, and missed; it rolled almost to his feet. He kicked it.

  “That’s how it goes,” he said. “Everything I start comes back and hits me in the face. All right, I was wrong to raid Prinny. I suppose what you really mean is that if I hadn’t he might not have been dead. That he was killed because . . .” He broke off.

  “Why did you turn sour, Bill?”

  Bristow was lighting a cigarette.

  “Prinny named you.”

  “As what?”

  “As the man ready to sell the Fioras. Prinny had one of them - the girl’s cross, the one her mother was supposed to have had.” Bristow rounded his desk, sat down, pulled open a drawer and produced a matchbox. He opened this; cotton-wool inside hid the jewelled cross.

  It flashed and flamed.

  Mannering exclaimed: “You left that in an unlocked drawer? You must be going crazy!”

  Bristow found a grin from a distant place. “They don’t burgle Scotland Yard,” he said, “and they certainly don’t raid it in daylight. After we’d found it, Prinny told me you’d brought it to him, and I knew you’d been to see him. He told me that you wanted him to hold it for you. He said he trusted you, and agreed. He was scared, and I brought him here. He was sitting in that chair for two hours, and we didn’t give him a minute’s peace. Oh, we didn’t third-degree him, but he was fit to drop when we finished. We didn’t shake him from his story by so much as a syllable. He was hard to disbelieve. I could imagine that you wanted to make sure that no one found the jewelled cross at Quinns, that you’d be safer without it.” Bristow was drawing at his cigarette between the sentences, and that gave the story a curiously disconnected form; he looked steadily at Mannering all the time. “Then this girl Susan Pengelly said her piece. That girl reminds me of someone, and it isn’t anyone good.”

  “Pictures of the knitting matrons of Tyburn,” said Mannering, “or the sadistic ladies of Madame Guillotine’s Court.”

  Bristow considered.

  “I see what you mean,” he conceded. “But if she were a Borgia, Delilah, Circe and Cleopatra rolled into one, and she isn’t, I’d have believed her when she said that cosh-boy said you had the Fiora Collection. And I don’t believe the slob would have acted the way he did if he hadn’t thought so. He certainly wanted Simon Lessing to use his influence on you.” That brought a faint smile even to Bristow’s cynical lips. “How much he didn’t know!”

  “Oh, he believed it. He tried the same trick on me.”

  Bristow looked pointedly at his swollen mouth.

  “Young Lessing must be in better condition, he nearly knocked the little swine’s head off.”

  “That’s the trouble,” Mannering said, “I’m getting spongy and decadent, and you know what it does to the muscles. So you couldn’t shake Prinny’s story?”

  “No.”

  “He was a funny little chap,” Mannering said reflectively. “I liked him, and I think the liking was mutual. He must have been terrified of what would happen to him. Terrified. With reason, too. He was told to name me as the man with the Fioras, and he did just that - for fear of death. I’d forgive him the lies even if he were alive.” There was a pause; then abruptly: “Any news of Joy Lessing?”

  “No.”

  “Call out?”

  “I told you it was. So you want me to believe that you don’t know where the Fioras are.”

  Mannering looked at the shimmering cross.

  “Until just now, my ignorance was even greater than yours.”

  “What is it you do know? Isn’t it time you stopped playing lone wolf, and . . .?”

  “No,” Mannering said, very precisely. “I know a little, Bill. I don’t know quite how significant.
If I pass it on you’ll have to take police action. If you take action, I’m afraid that Joy Lessing might die. That’s how scared I am of these people. That’s why I’m keeping some things to myself. But not the Fioras; I don’t know where they are.”

  Bristow chewed on his teeth.

  Traffic noises came in from the sunlit embankment and the sturdy bridge. Big Ben chimed suddenly, the booming note reverberating into and about the room. Twelve noon. So much had happened in so little time.

  Da-da-da-da.

  Bristow said: “If things go wrong because of what you’re holding back, you’ll have your own conscience to answer, and I for one wouldn’t let it rest. Here’s a question you might be able to solve. What makes these people think you have the Fioras?”

  “It’s the question I’m trying to answer myself.”

  . . . six - seven - eight.

  “It could be important.”

  Nine.

  “Yes, Bill. We have a gap of . . .” Mannering waited until the last booming stroke faded away; its echo lasted for a long time; after it, his voice sounded very quiet. “Francesca had the jewels with her, there isn’t much doubt about that. We know what time she reached the Festival Hall. We know she was found about an hour afterwards. She didn’t see her father after he had spoken to her at Waterloo Station - in fact she didn’t really see him then. She was attacked, presumably robbed, and then pushed into the river. Why didn’t Prinny’s killers get the Fiora jewels then? They snatched the cross from her neck. What actually happened to the other stones in that hour?”

  Bristow said, as if unwillingly: “I suppose there could be two sets of thieves.”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice? One set believe that I stole the Fioras either (a) in person or (b) through whoever took them from the girl. Who would tell them that I had the Collection?”

  Bristow said stonily: “You’re doing the guessing.”

  “Who would they expect to know who had them?”

  Bristow’s eyes lost their smudgy look, almost for the first time. He stubbed out a cigarette, and forgot to light another. He barked “Bernard Lisle!”

  “That’s right.”

  “The thieves got them from the girl, Lisle got them back, the thieves tackled him, and to keep in the clear he named you.” Bristow couldn’t get the words out fast enough.