Murder Offstage (20 page)

‘Good, I will track it down. Thank you. It should not be
difficult.’

Posie exhaled in relief as she saw his grip on Dolly loosen,
and she saw a blind moment of panic in the girl’s eyes as she too looked over
to the glass table where Caspian had been sitting, where the silent second man
still sat alone in the shadows. Posie had forgotten all about him.

She twisted her head back again suddenly as the Count
started to laugh again. His laugh chilled Posie to the bone and she saw that he
was indeed a man unhinged. He grabbed at Dolly again and with his free hand
pulled off her gag, forcing her face downwards again into the tray of liquid
cyanide.

‘Worthless little wretch!’ he shouted just before Dolly hit
the pan of liquid. ‘Did you
really
think I would let you live?’

‘No! No! What are you doing!’ Posie screamed. ‘That’s not
fair! I’ve given you the information!’

But at the same time she was conscious of a sudden movement
in the corner of the room, in the shadows. Someone was standing up, a low voice
resonating through the room, filled with a quiet authority:

‘No. Enough now.’

And at the same moment she heard the soft click of the
trigger of a gun, a whizzing sensation and a bullet passing within a hair’s
breadth of her face, skirting past Dolly and coming to rest in the lithe chest
and treacherous heart of Count Caspian della Rosa.

For a second the Count looked shocked, disbelief etched
across his handsome face, before collapsing backwards onto the wooden
floorboards. Dead as a doornail.

Dolly stood wide-eyed and totally silent. She didn’t look at
the dead man at her feet at all. She glanced instead into the corner at the
second man who had saved her.

Posie wished she could stand up, take the girl in her arms.
She felt sick to the bottom of her stomach but she had to be strong. ‘Dolly,
come here, untie me. We’re safe now. Caspian della Rosa is dead.’

Dolly covered her mouth and trembled.

‘You’ve got it all wrong, lovey. I was tryin’ to warn you,’
she whispered. ‘He’s not dead at all. You should be very, very scared. Everyone
else is.’

Posie tried her best to laugh – the body on the floor was
not moving at all. Was poor Dolly delusional after her traumatic ordeal?

CLICK.

More lights flicked on and the whole glass table was
suddenly harshly illuminated. The head of the table was now occupied by the
small, stocky man in the pinstriped suit; the man who was such a brilliant
shot. An expert killer in fact.

‘Your friend is right,’ the man said in a melodious,
foreign-lilting voice, tilting his head to one side in slight amusement,
playing with his coffee cup.

‘
I
am the real Count Caspian della Rosa; the Swiss
aristocrat who contacted the police today to complain about my invasion of
privacy. I hoped to put them off my scent. They swallowed it too. Hook, line
and sinker.’

He smiled reassuringly. ‘Have no fear. I can assure you I am
one hundred per cent the genuine article.’

****

Twenty-Three

Posie swallowed. ‘I don’t understand. How can it be
that this dead man here has been posing to everyone as Count della Rosa?’

‘Oh, but he didn’t. Only to you.’

The man took a calm drag of his coffee, and wiped his lips
with an immaculate strawberry-pink handkerchief.

‘But
why
?’ Posie stammered.

‘Because I told him to, of course. He always did everything
I told him to. Well, until recently anyway. He was my wingman. My mouthpiece.’

‘But why did he lie to me? Why did this man pretend to be
you
?’

The man smiled briefly. ‘I needed you to fall just a little bit
in love with a glamorous idea…’ The man trailed off into silence: he seemed to
be hundreds of miles away. 

Posie had no idea what he was on about. She decided on a
more concrete tack:

‘You don’t seem very upset now he’s dead…’

The man shrugged easily. ‘Cecil was a paid thug. A useful
one; a handsome one. But he was a thug all the same, and just lately he was
becoming reckless in many ways. Dangerous for me. He had to go.’

‘Cecil? So the Inspector was right…and I was wrong…he
was
Cecil Chicken?’

‘The very same. It was his
real
name too! A laughable
name, is it not? But sometimes, you know, the truth is far better than fiction.
All of my workers are required to work under their own names, unless of course
I instruct them otherwise. It makes things easier; more plausible if they are
ever questioned.’

Posie exhaled. She stared at the man seated in front of her.
He seemed personable enough, but was he just another crank, some madman? She
hoped to goodness that the police would arrive soon. The gun, she assumed the
Belgian revolver so reverently spoken of by the Forensics Officer, Mr Maguire,
still lay horribly close to the man’s plump little hands.

She looked at the man narrowly. ‘Who
are
you? Be
straight with me.’

‘I’ve told you already. I am a Swiss Count. I can trace my
family back at least six hundred years, in fact. I could show you my papers and
my passport but I sent them across to Scotland Yard, to that nice Commissioner,
first thing this morning. Just about now one of my associates will be picking
them up for me. They are one hundred per cent genuine. But I see by your face
that you still don’t believe me, Miss Parker?’

‘I don’t know what to believe anymore,’ she said flatly,
struggling with the new and doubtful information.

She shrugged. ‘I know I never came across any evidence for a
Count at all. It seemed at points that he was just a myth. But people speak of
him as if he really does exist, and usually in tones of fear. Are you saying
all of that was
you
?’

‘Yes. And you have observed accurately that in my business
dealings I am always very discreet. That is how we Swiss are; masters of
secrecy. By necessity. I run an empire with connections stretching out all over
the world, mainly run by Belgians; a clever people, with a great expertise in
jewels. Hardly a soul outside of my staff at the Athenaeum Theatre would
recognise me or know exactly who I am. Not one piece of paper will link me to
anything, but here I am all the same: the most powerful man in all of Europe.’

Posie was certain now the man was deranged. She had to play
this carefully. She kept an eye on the gun.

‘Of course you are,’ she smiled insincerely. Behind her,
next to the body of Cecil Chicken, Dolly was silent and had not moved once. It
was as if she had been turned to stone.

‘I will show you evidence if you will not believe me. But
you know, Miss Parker, I am slightly disappointed in you. I thought you were a
great detective…We have met before. Several times, in fact. Do you
really
not recognise me?’

Just then Mr Minks jumped up onto the man’s lap and started
purring happily, unfaithful cat that he was. He looked cosy sitting there on
the strange man’s lap. The scene reminded Posie of something. Just then the man
looked over at Posie and laughed. He changed his parting and then slicked his
hair forwards messily and when he spoke it was with a perfect English
middle-class accent.

‘And now?’

Posie took a sharp intake of breath – it was the man who had
visited Grape Street and pretended to be a client in order to take away Mr
Minks! But what a difference a gesture, an accent made! These slight
adjustments and he was another person entirely.

‘You should have been an actor,’ Posie said with what she
hoped sounded like admiration rather than sarcasm. Behind her she heard Dolly
stifle a yelp of fear.

The man spoke again in his normal voice:

‘Ah! Now you have hit the nail right on the head, Miss
Parker! I knew we would get along fabulously. When I was a small boy all I
could dream about was acting, and owning a theatre. But alas, in a noble family
such as mine, I was told to forget all about my dream. There were other,
grander plans laid out for me. But I continued acting off and on, over the
years, even though it was almost always offstage. And this last year I finally
got to realise my dream of owning a theatre.’

He turned and smiled widely. ‘And just this last week, what
a lot of chances you have given me, Miss Parker, for acting! I have followed
you around in all manner of disguises.’

Posie stared at the man in horror. So it was
he
who
had been tailing her in his brogues and taking snaps, not the man she now knew
to be Cecil Chicken.

He stood up and sauntered across to the wooden trestle
table, carrying Mr Minks in his arms. He kicked the body of his wingman out of
the way. He reached for the remaining stack of photos which Cecil Chicken had
not thrown at Posie. He sheaved through them, smiling to himself:

‘I was busy on Monday: I was a photo-journalist at the Ritz,
hungry for news of a murder. And then I followed you along Whitehall in the
evening, and then I played a club servant at No 11, St James. And I was kept
busy on Tuesday too: I was a shoddily dressed client with a fondness for tennis
and stealing cats in the afternoon, and later on at my own nightclub I played a
police forensics photographer. The next day I was an old Catholic priest. And
today I have been a dawn cat-walker, and then a policeman! And I’m secretly
thrilled you didn’t recognise me as being one and the same person. Quite a
compliment.’

Posie’s head was spinning. He was right: she had not thought
for one minute that
one
person could possibly be all these different
people, some of whom she had noticed and others whom she had barely glanced at.
But it made sense: what was it Len had said recently when he had slipped under
the police tape at the closed
La Luna
club in search of Mr Minks?

‘
That’s the thing with photographers…we’re almost
invisible.
’

And it was the same thing with a club servant, a
priest…these people had been almost invisible somehow, blending into the
background. Bit parts. Insignificant parts.

It was the same too with this strange man here who seemed so
proud of himself. He was forgettable. He was like a blank canvas and if Posie
had tried to sketch his face later on today she would have found it very
difficult. It wasn’t that he was ugly; just that he didn’t register much of an
impression. A perfect character actor, in fact, but one who would never,
ever
be a leading man. Not like the stunning man lying dead at their feet.

‘And it turns out you’ve been carrying a photo of me around
with you all of today. I suppose without realising it.’ Across the man’s face
flickered the merest glimmer of hurt. Then came the slow smile again.

‘Miss Price, please open Miss Parker’s bag and put the only
photograph you will find within it on the table in front of her.’ He was
whistling now, straightening photos and instruments on the wooden table as if
he didn’t have a care in the world.

Dolly fumbled with the catch on the carpet bag, breathing
raggedly. She found the Belgian press-photo and put it on the glass table,
avoiding the pools of still-wet coffee. She waited at Posie’s side.

Posie gulped and scanned the photo. The brightness of Lucky
Lucy and the man she had thought of as Caspian della Rosa was undimmed, and she
had trouble focusing on anything else. She forced her eye along the group, and
now she saw him where she hadn’t even bothered to look before. The man who
claimed to be the real Count della Rosa, the man just a couple of feet away
from her now was the man with the ventriloquist’s dummy.

‘Oh!’ she gasped. She looked up. ‘So you
all
knew
each other a long, long time, then?’

Posie looked again at the photo and now she noticed tiny,
tiny details she had missed at first. She saw now that this man’s eyes had been
locked firmly onto Lucky Lucy, and that he was wearing the same cool, calm
smile that he wore right now; his grip on his ventriloquist’s dummy tight.
Posie knew then that he had been wildly in love with Lucky Lucy. And she
realised that somehow he had been the brains, the power behind the whole posed
picture. He had stage-managed it. He had
wanted
it to look like this.

She knew in that instant that the man was telling the truth,
that he
was
who he claimed to be.

‘The war years were happy times for us,’ he smiled. ‘We were
forced to leave England for a while, but we all got the chance to act. They
were productive days.’

‘I heard a rumour you were trading in weapons,’ Posie shot
at him.

‘Productive days,’ he repeated mildly, ignoring her taunt.
‘Do you know what I called my ventriloquist’s dummy?’

Posie shook her head.

‘Cecil!’ he sniggered, kicking the body at his feet lightly.
‘It humiliated poor dear Cecil of course, on a daily basis, but then I pulled
his strings in real life too, and paid him handsomely, so he couldn’t complain
too much. And he received other benefits.’

‘Like what?’

‘Helping to run my vast empire, of course. And as you can
see from that photograph, he got to pose around the place with my girl, my
greatest love. Although it was just an act.’

‘Why did you let him?’

The man looked up at Posie directly and with a look of sheer
incredulous surprise on his face.

‘Why do you think? A girl like Lucy was so beautiful that
she lit up any room she walked into. Do you really think people would have
believed she was
my
girlfriend? A man like
me
?’

For the first time Posie felt a tiny stab of pity for the
man. He went on:

‘To all the world, Cecil was her perfect, beautiful match. Besides,
too much attention on me in public would have exposed me. People would have
questioned who I really was. It was always paramount that I was never
centre-stage. Cecil was my shield.’

The man had crossed to the other side of the room and
flicked on another light-switch. Yet more boards covered in maps were revealed.
Boxes wrapped in brown paper and string were stacked neatly along the far wall.
The man seemed preoccupied, and nestled his chin in Mr Minks’ fur as if for
comfort. He was standing looking at a map, consulting his wristwatch. All this
time Dolly stood in silence.

Just then the strange atmosphere of the room was broken by a
penetrating ringing noise. It sounded like a telephone, but could it be? Who on
earth had a telephone in their
own
house? Posie tried to catch Dolly’s
eye but the girl was watching her boss in silent stricken fear. The man crossed
the room, past the brown-papered parcels. He released the cat and picked up the
receiver and took the mouthpiece.

‘Yes, I’ll accept the call,’ he nodded. He waited a few
seconds before speaking to someone he obviously knew quite well. He sounded
irritated.

‘Which one? Kimberley, you say? I’ve transferred the money
already, you fool. Get on with it. You know the score. Sign the papers. Get the
place opened up and get mining.’ He slammed the receiver down and returned to
look at a map.

Posie swung herself around as much as she was able to. Her
fear had begun to ebb a little. She wanted to know the full story, and the man
seemed talkative enough.

‘So why did you kill her, Lucky Lucy?’

The man stepped back into a shadow, and didn’t speak for
what felt like a long time. When he spoke at last it was in a soft and resigned
voice:

‘I didn’t kill her. I would never have been able to do that.
I loved her too much. From the very first moment I set eyes on her on stage in
Belgium, years ago. I loved her even though she betrayed me, and everything we
had worked for. I didn’t see it coming: it was just a normal job for us,
although the prize was very special.’

‘You mean the Maharajah diamond?’

He nodded. ‘I had been after it for years, ever since I had
heard about it as a boy. We knew she had it at last. I had spies watching her. It
was on her finger! All she had to do was get into our waiting car. I was
sitting watching her in the Palm Court at the Ritz, unobserved as usual,
drinking a soda-and-lime behind a newspaper. I had brought along a few men from
the theatre as I suspected there might be trouble. I had seen something
different about her in that last week; a brightness, a strange energy.
Something told me she was going to steal that black diamond from right under my
nose and run away. I was in danger of losing them both.’

‘The curse was at work again, you mean?’

He shrugged in the shadows. ‘I don’t believe in that really.
But when she made a run for it I wasn’t surprised. I
was
surprised she
had a gun on her, and I
was
surprised she shot poor old Le Merle. But I
told Cecil to go after her and catch her up and I would try and sort out the
mess she had left behind, clean up a little. That’s when I first saw
you
,
tripping up the stairs…’