An Expert in Murder

An Expert in Murder

A New Mystery

Featuring Josephine Tey

nicola upson

To Phyllis and to Irene, for their wisdom
and belief, with love from us both

Contents

One

Had she been superstitious, Josephine Tey might have realised the…

3

Two

Detective Inspector Archie Penrose could never travel in the King’s… 17

Three

When Josephine awoke next morning, it had just gone nine…

31

Four

It was turning into the sort of day that made…

49

Five

Penrose sat at his desk on the third floor of…

71

Six

Josephine was already waiting on the pavement when Penrose’s car… 79

Seven

Theatre is a self-obsessed medium at the best of times…

95

Eight

The telephone on the dark oak desk in Bernard Aubrey’s…

105

Nine

Penrose had not intended to use his ticket for the…

123

Ten

Bernard Aubrey’s body lay just inside his office and Penrose…

137

Eleven

Penrose stood at the door to the Green Room, and…

155

Twelve

The early hours of Sunday morning brought nothing but despair…

185

Thirteen

As Penrose left the interview room and walked out to…

203

Fourteen

Peace was an infrequent visitor to 66 St Martin’s Lane…

231

Fifteen

Even late on a Sunday afternoon, Longacre seemed too narrow…

249

Sixteen

In the early hours of Monday morning, St Martin’s Lane…

275

Author’s Note 289

Credits

Cover

Copyright

About the Publisher

Night was falling when at last he sat down, ready to write.

Looking out over the garden, he watched as the louring, grey skies
were replaced – inch by inch – with a blackness that wrapped itself
like a shroud around the bushes at the limits of his view. Winter
had played its customary trick, weaving the landscape together in
a cloth of muted colours and bringing a spent uniformity to all he
could see. The cold had deadened the richness of the world. In the
morning, there would be a covering of frost on the window ledge.

Impatient now to hand over his past, he poured the last inch of
warmth from the whisky bottle on the desk and drained his glass
before reaching for a sheet of notepaper. It was, he thought with
satisfaction, an original sort of bequest. As if in deference to the
significance of the moment, the house – usually so alive with faint
but familiar sounds – fell silent as he picked up the slim, brown
volume that lay on the table in front of him. He flicked through its
pages until he came to the section he wished to use; the phrase had
always struck him as peculiarly apt, and never more so than now.

With a bitter smile, which came half from regret and half from resignation, he picked up the pen and began, his lips forming the
words in perfect unison with the ink on the page. ‘To become an
expert in murder’, he wrote, ‘cannot be so difficult.’

1

One

Had she been superstitious, Josephine Tey might have realised the odds were against her when she found that her train, the early-morning express from the Highlands, was running an hour and a half late. At six o’clock, when she walked down the steps to the south-bound platform, she expected to find the air of excitement which always accompanies the muddled loading of people and suitcases onto a departing train. Instead, she was met by a testa-ment to the long wait ahead: the carriages were in darkness; the engine itself gravely silent; and a mountain of luggage built steadily along the cold, grey strand of platform. But like most people of her generation, who had lived through war and loss, Josephine had acquired a sense of perspective, and the train’s mechanical failure foretold nothing more sinister to her than a tiresome wait in the station’s buffet. In fact, although this was the day of the first murder, nothing would disturb her peace of mind until the following morning.

By the time she had drained three cups of bland coffee, the train appeared to be ready for its journey. She left the buffet’s crowded warmth and prepared to board, stopping on the way to buy a copy of yesterday’s
Times
and a bar of Fry’s chocolate from the small news kiosk next to the platform. As she took her seat, she could not help but feel a rush of excitement in spite of the delay: in a matter of hours, she would be in London.

The ornate station clock declared that it was a quarter past eight when the train finally left the mouth of the station and moved slowly out into the countryside. Josephine settled back into her seat and allowed the gentle thrum of the wheels to soothe away 3

any lingering frustrations of the morning. Removing her gloves and taking out a handkerchief, she cleared a small port-hole in the misted window and watched as the strengthening light took some of the tiredness from the cold March day. On the whole, winter had been kind. There had, thank God, been no repeat of the snow wreaths and roaring winds which had brought the Highland railway to a sudden standstill the year before, leaving her and many others stranded in waiting rooms overnight. Engines with snow ploughs attached had been sent to force a passage through, and she would never forget the sight of them charging the drifts at full speed, shooting huge blocks of snow forty feet into the air.

Shivering at the memory of it, she unfolded her newspaper and turned to the review pages, where she was surprised to find that the Crime Book Society’s selection was ‘a hair-raising yarn’ called
Mr Munt Carries On
. They couldn’t have read the book, she thought, since she had tried it herself and considered Mr Munt to have carried on for far too long to be worth seven and six of anybody’s money. When she arrived at the theatre section, which she had purposely saved until last, she smiled to herself at the news that
Richard of Bordeaux
– her own play and now London’s longest run – was about to enter its final week.

As the train moved south, effortlessly eating into four hundred miles or so of open fields and closed communities, she noticed that spring had come early to England – as quick to grace the gentle countryside as it had been to enhance the drama of the hills against a Highland sky. There was something very precious about the way that rail travel allowed you to see the landscape, she thought. It had an expansiveness about it that the close confinement of a motor car simply could not match and she had loved it since, as a young woman, she had spent her holidays travelling every inch of the single-track line that shadowed the turf from Inverness to Tain.

Even now, more than twenty years later, she could never leave Scotland by train without remembering the summer of her seven-teenth birthday, when she and her lover – in defiance of the terrible weather – had explored the Highlands by rail, taking a different route from Daviot Station every morning. When war broke out, a 4

year later almost to the day, the world changed forever but – for her at least – that particular bond to a different age had stayed the same, and perhaps always would.

This link with the past was becoming harder to hold on to, though, as she found herself unexpectedly in the public eye. She had had thirteen months and four hundred and sixty performances to get used to being the author of the most popular play in London, but fame still tasted strange to her.
Richard of Bordeaux
had brought success, but success brought a relinquishing of privacy which, though necessary, was not easily or willingly given.

Every time she journeyed south, she felt torn between the celebrity that awaited her in London and the ties which kept her in Inverness – and knew she was not truly comfortable with either.

But during the miles in between, for a few precious hours, she could still remember how it had felt to be seventeen and sure of what you wanted.

Today, though, anonymity vanished even earlier than expected when a pleasant-looking young woman boarded the train at Berwick-upon-Tweed and slid back the door to Josephine’s carriage. She struggled apologetically with her luggage, but a gentleman quickly stood to help her wrestle a large, beautifully embroidered travelling bag into the overhead luggage rack, and she smiled gratefully at him when he offered up his window seat. As the girl settled herself in, Josephine gazed at her in fascination, but it was not so much her features that drew attention as the remarkable hat that framed them – a cloche, made of fine black straw, which was accentuated on one side by a curled white ostrich feather, flecked with beige and brown and attached by a long, black-tipped hatpin. It was hardly the sort of thing that Josephine would ever wear herself, and it made her own plain velvet seem bland in comparison, but she admired its delicate beauty nonetheless.

The young woman nodded brightly at her and Josephine returned to her paper but, as she scanned the racing pages, she was uncomfortably conscious of being watched. When she looked up, the girl turned hurriedly back to her magazine, acutely embarrassed at having been caught, and began to study its pages with 5

exaggerated interest. Aware that the journey would be more relaxed for both of them if she smoothed the moment over, Josephine broke the ice. ‘You know, I often think that for all the nonsense these racing pundits talk, I could get a job doing it myself,’ she said.

The girl laughed, delighted to have a chance at conversation. ‘As long as it doesn’t take you away from the stage,’ she replied, and –

as she noticed Josephine’s surprise – looked aghast at her own familiarity. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ she continued, ‘and I really don’t want to be a nuisance, but I’ve just got to say something. It is you, isn’t it? I recognised you straight away from that lovely art-icle. What a wonderful coincidence!’

Josephine forced a smile and quietly cursed the publicity photograph that had appeared in one of the more obscure theatrical journals, confirming to its handful of readers that Gordon Daviot

– the name she wrote under – was certainly not hers by birth.

‘How observant of you,’ she said, embarrassed to see that the other occupants of the carriage were taking a new interest in their travelling companion. ‘That came out a year ago – I’m surprised you remember it.’

‘That’s the coincidence – I read it again just the other day when I found out I was coming down to see
Richard
in its final week, and I’ve got it with me now.’ She pointed towards her bag as proof of the happy accident. ‘Listen, I hope you won’t think I’m just saying this because it’s you, but I do love that play. I’ve been so many times already and I
will
miss it when it’s gone.’ She paused, absent-mindedly curling a lock of brown hair round her finger as she looked out of the window. ‘I suppose most people would think it silly to get as engrossed in theatre as I do, or to put such value on stories that other people make up, but for me it’s much more than a play.’ She looked back at Josephine. ‘I shouldn’t be talking to you like this when we’ve only just met and you want to read your paper, but I must thank you now I’ve got the chance. My father died last year, and it’s all been so miserable for my mother and me, and sometimes your play got me through. It was the only thing I could lose myself in.’

6

Touched, Josephine folded away her newspaper. ‘It’s not silly,’

she said. ‘If you took any notice of people who think it is, there’d be no pleasure in the world. I’m sorry to hear about your father, though. Was his death very sudden?’

‘Oh no, he’d been ill for a long time. He was in the army, you see, and he never recovered from the war.’ She smiled ruefully.

‘And sometimes I think my mother will never recover from my father. She was devastated when we lost him – we both were – but she’s been better lately. And we work together, so at least I’ve been able to keep an eye on her.’