A Proposal to Die For (11 page)

A sound of heavy metal clattering came from the basement. A voice, suspiciously like that of gruff Moustache, called out in surprise and pain.

Alkmene froze and stared. Had the unsuspecting Moustache run into someone with evil intentions who was now trying to knock him down to flee?

If this attacker appeared from the basement door, could she stop him?

Should she call for more police?

A huffing sound, coughing…

Then Moustache appeared covered in coal dust. He rubbed at his face, leaving stains everywhere.

Alkmene suppressed a burst of laughter to ask demurely, ‘Did you see my dog?'

‘If he is in there, my lady, he will need a bath.' Moustache coughed again, panting for breath. ‘The place is full of coal like somebody dumped a ton into it.' His eyes went wide. ‘I do hope they did not do that after your little dog went in. He might have been uh…'

Alkmene forced another smile. ‘My dog is very smart. I am sure he would have run out before he got…into a tight spot. I assume he is on his way home now. I am so sorry for your trouble.'

Moustache tried to dust off his uniform, creating large clouds of black dust in the air. Passers-by shrank into the street or even crossed to the other side to get away from him.

Alkmene said quickly, ‘Thank you. Good day,' and marched off in the direction of Meade Street. She had her fingers crossed Dubois would not still be sitting there with the constable when Moustache came back into the coffee house.

Although she didn't doubt he would have laughed his head off if he could have seen his old enemy this way.

Chapter Ten

When Alkmene trotted up the stairs of Meade Street 33, a delicious scent of something baking wafted towards her. Her stomach growled and she realized she had had nothing since breakfast and running out of the door with the incriminating blackmail letter in her purse.

Instead of Dubois revealing to her which bugger in the Tar Street slums was the alleged convict and helping her set up a trap for the greedy blackmailer, he had told her he was himself the crook in question and denied they could do anything to catch the blackmailer, at least the person behind it all.

Normally that would have been a severe setback, but with Oksana Matejevna's story about the brooch they had a new lead to the blackmailer's identity, which was far more exciting than her little trap could ever have been. If Evelyn Steinbeck was involved in the blackmail, it might even provide information as to how Mr Norwhich had died.

Alkmene did wonder though why the blackmailer in the case of the countess had asked for something so specific as this precious gold heirloom while in her case he had simply wanted a hundred pounds.

With that question on her lips, and several more about Dubois's meet with the constable, she knocked, awaiting his gruff ‘enter' before opening the door.

Dubois had slipped out of his jacket and had rolled up his shirtsleeves, baring his tanned muscled arms. He stood at the small stove in the corner, the fish hissing as it was swept through the buttered pan by his spatula. The scent was more spicy than fishy, and Alkmene approached with her head tilted. ‘What have you done with it?'

‘Secret recipe,' Dubois said. ‘Why don't you uncork the wine?'

He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the bottle standing on the plain high table. ‘The corkscrew is beside it.'

Father had one at home where you twisted the corkscrew into the cork, then lowered a steel contraption to keep it in place while by an ingenious little mechanism you lifted the cork out of the bottle's neck. Alkmene had seen the butler do it countless times and was sure she could have repeated it with ease. But this corkscrew was of a simpler variety. Just insert and pull.

‘Brute strength,' Dubois said as she was at it in vain.

He left the fish a moment to take the bottle from her hands, clench it between his knees and pull.

Alkmene squinted, waiting for the moment the cork would come loose and Dubois would fall backwards with bottle and all, spilling all their wine.

But no, with a pop the cork came loose, and he managed to balance himself, pull the bottle up and put it on the table. Dropping the corkscrew beside it, he returned to the pan just as the fish was making a sound like it was going to stick to the bottom.

‘Find the glasses, will you?' he said over his shoulder. ‘In the sideboard.'

Alkmene nodded and went over, sat on her haunches and opened one of the low doors. Inside was a
jumble of paper, candlesticks with candles, two bottles of ink, a cardboard box marked Christmas cards, a pitcher with a piece missing from the rim.

Finally, by shuffling some stuff around, she detected two glasses in the back, not matching, but as they were the only ones around, she took them. ‘Have you got a cloth or something to dust them off?'

‘Just blow off the dust,' Dubois said carelessly.

She put the glasses on the table, using her sleeve to polish her own. He could blow off his if he wanted to.

She folded her hands behind her back and shifted her weight from the balls of her feet to the heels and back. ‘So what did the constable have to say?'

‘The police surgeon said that Silas Norwhich died of a blow to the head, but he wasn't sure whether it had been the fall on the hearth rim or a blow on the head by a person, who then put him near the hearth. Both possible. Odd thing was there was ink on his fingers as if he had been writing when he had been disturbed. By a visitor or an intruder. A servant had said that the pantry door was never locked so as the butler was out, somebody might have come in that way. Which means our mysterious visitor might not have been the only one to come round that night.'

Alkmene grimaced. ‘That is bad luck. I mean, now the police will have an even stronger case to argue that, even if it was someone from the outside, it was a random intruder. They won't be looking for motive.'

‘Maybe they will.' Dubois worked the fish with his spatula. ‘The dead man had something clenched in one hand. Bit of paper. Most of it had been torn off, but this bit was stuck in his grasp. Surgeon had to break his fingers to get to it. Rigor mortis, you know.'

Alkmene pulled a face. ‘I think there are some dull treatises on that at home. But if he clutched a bit and the rest was torn off, it could mean the killer tore it off, to remove incriminating evidence.'

‘The constable's thoughts exactly. He is ambitious, so determined to prove foul play.'

Alkmene leaned forward. ‘So what did the bit of paper say?'

‘Difficult to determine but they think it came off an official paper. Good quality paper, touch of something red that might have been a stamp or seal. So it could have been some document Norwhich obtained in an official office. Marriage licence, birth certificate.'

Alkmene blinked. ‘What could he have wanted with those?'

Dubois shrugged. ‘No idea. Did it come from among his own papers? Or did the killer bring it? Did he show it to him to prove a point?'

‘Oh.' Alkmene brightened. ‘Could it have been a will?'

Dubois nodded. ‘Could be. How come?'

‘Didn't this niece of his, the American actress, turn up here fairly recently? She told me she had been here for a few weeks only. Maybe Norwhich changed the will in her favour. And maybe the original beneficiary wasn't too happy with that. Because Norwhich never had any children, his original heir must have been some other relative.'

Dubois nodded. ‘We should look closely at Norwhich's family relations and dispositions. The constable told me who Norwhich's lawyer was. One Pemboldt. I wrote down the address. It's just off Brook Street. Haven't had time to look him up yet of course.'

Dubois lifted the frying pan off the stove and carried it to the table. He wanted to put it down, but Alkmene snapped, ‘Wait! That will ruin the wood of the surface. You need to put something
underneath.'

She looked around her and fetched a metal tray that stood against the wall.

‘My landlady would be grateful for your efforts,' Dubois said cynically, ‘but as you can see, not much can ruin this table any more.'

‘Still there is no point in making more marks on it,' Alkmene insisted. ‘I suppose the wine has breathed enough now. Care to pour?' She held out her cleaned glass to him.

Dubois picked up the bottle and poured just an inch. He also put the same amount in his own dusty glass, then put the bottle down.

Alkmene lifted the glass to her nose. She carefully sniffed, then let the wine waltz through the glass.

Dubois smiled at her. ‘You know how to drink wine.'

‘My father has such precious bottles that it would be a crime to just gulp them down.'

At the word precious his face set again, like he was reminded of something hard. He clenched the stem of the glass.

Alkmene took another sip. ‘Very nice. Fruity.'

‘I know it should probably have been white wine with this fish. Red is for pork, beef and venison. But I don't own a cellar full of it like your father probably does.'

‘My father is a few thousand miles away.' Alkmene lifted her glass and smiled at Dubois. ‘Prosit!'

He held her gaze a few moments, then his features relaxed. Leaning over, he touched his glass to hers and said, ‘Prosit!'

The wine gave everything this nice rosy glow, or was it the delicious fish that graced her plate with some potatoes and green beans with sauce?

Alkmene ate her fill, listening closely to the further details Dubois gave of his talk with the constable. The police were still treating it as an accident, but one of the neighbours had also testified to them that someone had come to see the master that night. He had not seen more than a shadow slipping to the door.

‘He obviously told them even less than he told me,' Dubois said. ‘Doesn't want to get called at the inquest, I bet. Doesn't want to take the day off from work. Or just hates his name being mentioned in anything messy.'

Alkmene nodded thoughtfully. ‘But if the bundled up man who came to the house that night is the killer, why is he visiting Evelyn Steinbeck at her hotel? Did he act under her orders? Did she have her uncle killed in her absence, so she'd have an ironclad alibi? For the inheritance, the art collection?'

‘They were taking an awful risk if they played it that way,' Dubois said. ‘If the police had cried foul play, she would have been the first and most likely suspect. After all, she benefits directly from the death.'

‘Right. But she wasn't there that night. Lots of witnesses saw her elsewhere. As long as her accomplice is not caught and confesses, nobody can blame her really.'

Dubois nodded again. ‘There is another possibility. What if the bundled up man was the old beneficiary of the will? Ms Steinbeck's brother for instance. Maybe he was sole heir before Norwhich became enamoured with her charm and made it all over to her. If her brother killed him, maybe in an argument, giving him some kind of push so he fell, that would explain why he visited her at the hotel
and why she is not keen on a police investigation. She is shielding him.'

‘Bravo,' Alkmene said, ‘but all of this holds little water as long as we have no idea if Ms Steinbeck has a brother who might have benefited from the will before she turned up. Perhaps she was Norwhich's beneficiary all along, but she simply never came here because she was building her career on Broadway. We could be looking in the wrong direction altogether. Just consider this. What if Norwhich was blackmailed as well? What if he was writing a cheque before he died and that's how the ink got on his fingers? Did you ask the constable if any blackmail letters were found among his paperwork? Or if anybody knew he was under strain lately? You said when we first met that he was wary of strangers like one is of rabid dogs. Maybe he was afraid because he was being blackmailed.'

‘Now I have to say bravo.' Picking up his wine glass, Dubois leaned back in his chair for a moment. ‘No, I did not ask the constable all that but I will as soon as I can. It is a very interesting point. Find the blackmailer, find the killer. Or at least the link to him.'

His dark eyes sparkled with an energetic light as he surveyed her. ‘How did you manage to keep Moustache away for so long?'

Alkmene shrugged. ‘Instead of making up a theft I invented a runaway pooch. I had him search inside a cellar for it. He got just a teeny bit of coal dust on his uniform.'

Dubois laughed. ‘I bet he enjoyed that little job. Must be your last name that makes people willing to crawl through the dirt, literally, to please you.'

Alkmene dropped her fork with a clatter. ‘I wish you would stop pestering me about my last name. I can no more change it than you can change yours.'

There was a charged silence, then Dubois said, ‘Fair enough.'

He stared up at the ceiling, his eyes suddenly dark.

Alkmene took her glass and emptied it, but this last draught of wine was a bit bitter.

Dubois said, ‘When the SS
Athena
sank, how many people were on board? Do you know?'

‘I have no idea. A few hundred I'd guess.'

‘More like two thousand. Now I have gone over the passenger lists and I have checked as far as I could how many people survived. Not just in general, but specified into groups. The first class passengers. Second class. Third class. Then crew. What do you think I found?'

Alkmene pursed her lips. ‘I have no idea. I do know crew members are supposed to stay on board longest so I suppose most of them perished.'

‘Correct. But how about passengers?'

Alkmene had a feeling where this was going. She put her empty glass down and faced him squarely. ‘If you and I had been on board, my chances for survival would have been far better than yours, assuming I would have travelled first class and you third.'

Dubois nodded. ‘About three times better. Now what does that say?'

Alkmene shrugged. ‘That people pay for better service when they take out a first class ticket and that they actually get it.'