Murder Offstage (9 page)

‘Just one thing, Inspector,’ cut in a nervous-sounding
Rainbird, ‘
Where
are we exactly, sir?’

The Inspector looked uncertain too for a moment. ‘Radnor
Square,’ he said quickly to his Sergeant, his eyes alighting with relief on the
black and white enamelled plaque behind them.

‘I’d say we’re at the back of Hatton Garden,’ said Len,
trying to be helpful. Rainbird nodded and ran off into the darkness.

‘Hatton Garden, eh?’ muttered the Inspector. Posie caught a
gleam of interest flash across his face. But before she could ask him more, out
of the corner of her eye she saw cars drawing up, over on the far side of the
square.

‘We’d better hurry. More people are coming now. We’ll draw
attention to ourselves if we just stand here lurking around. Like we don’t know
the score.’

‘Well, they’d be right about that!’ said Len crossly.

‘Come on. I know what to do,’ Posie was bluffing, but she
knew they had to move fast. ‘Follow me, all of you.’

The sound of the car doors slamming in the distance had
spurred her into action. She linked arms with Len and dragged him down the
steps. Before he could say anything she rapped sharply on the trapdoor four
times. She put her sunglasses on quickly.

For a horribly long second nothing happened. She was aware
of Dolly pressed in close behind her, her face sweating with fear under her
thick greasepaint, despite the cold; Inspector Lovelace and Sergeant Binny were
pressed tightly on either side.

Then the door moved.

There was no creaking, no swing of rusted hinges. Instead,
it curved upwards and to the left smoothly. Posie saw at once that the old
wooden trapdoor was a mere decoration: thick shining metal casing and a rubber
seal ran around the underside. From the exposed square in the ground a smoky
greenish light emanated upwards. It looked like the entrance to a submarine.

‘What on earth?’ whistled Len beside her, and just then the
head of a big burly man popped up.

‘Password?’ he snapped impatiently. He appeared to be
balancing at the top of a staircase or a ladder. He was holding a list of names
and was brandishing a stubby pencil in his hand.

Jeepers
, thought Posie.
No idea
. She felt Len
tensing beside her.

‘Darling!’ she said, laughing light-heartedly, bluffing for
her life. ‘I’ve no idea! Caspian just told me to come here tonight and knock
four times on this funny little door! There was no mention of passwords. He
gave me these, though.’ She brandished the matches she had fortunately
remembered to bring.

‘What’s yer name, then?’ the man asked gruffly.

Oh, hell’s bells
. They hadn’t thought of this.
Stupidly. Posie suddenly remembered her exotic Spanish disguise.

‘I am a Countess,’ she said haughtily, and raised her
sunglasses a smidgen to give the man what she hoped was her best withering
glance. ‘Countess Faustina,’ she added in a clear autocratic voice, supplying
the only Countess’ name she could think of on the spur of the moment; the
aristocratic victim of the Carino Affair. She surprised herself with the
fluency of her performance. Beside her she heard Len stifle a laugh.

‘No,’ the man said, scanning his guestlist. ‘No Faustina
here. Sorry, love. You and your mates ’ad better scarper, quick-like.’

Posie felt for a horrible fluttering second that she had
lost the battle. Behind their little group a crush of fabulously dressed people
were gathering, spilling down the steps in a drunken riot.

‘Hurry up, you oaf!’ shouted a man with a very plummy voice
from the back of the group. Posie pressed on:

‘Look, mister. You go and find Caspian now. Tell him who I
am, and that you locked me out of here. He’ll be mad as hell, I promise you. I
didn’t like to mention it before, but he’s my first cousin.’

Posie heard Dolly’s sharp intake of breath behind her. At
the same time a slight glimmer of fear crossed the man’s face.

‘You just tell him his cousin the Countess is here. You’ll
lose your job in a second, believe me.’

The man looked quickly back at the gathering crowd, and then
nodded at Posie:

‘All right, yer grace. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Please come
on in.’

The man disappeared from view and Posie looked down into the
green misty light. She saw a burnished metal staircase, wide and modern,
twisting away to one side.

She gathered up her tight red skirts and stepped down into
the hole. She felt a cool smooth bannister under her hand. She continued
walking about twenty steps down into the smoky green light, thankfully aware of
Len close behind her. At the bottom the ground hollowed out.

And what she saw there made her gasp in surprise.

****

Nine

‘Great Scott!’ Len was standing beside her. ‘It’s
enormous!’

A long, low, cavernous space stretched out before them. The
room was the size of a full-scale theatre, with a bar running the length of the
right-hand side, and a glittering spangled-curtained stage at the far end. It
was very crowded: there were probably over seventy people gathered at the bar
alone and another two hundred or so sitting in clusters at the round tables
which were scattered tightly across the space.

The guests were dressed fabulously, theatrically – an angel
here, a devil there. There was even a girl in a mermaid’s outfit, replete with
a complicated hinged tail. Dolly had been right: to have been underdressed here
would have been a mortal, noticeable crime.

The walls and floor were entirely lined in a silvery thick
metal casing. Posie looked upwards; the ceiling too was covered in it,
punctured every now and then with a tiny crescent moon-shaped hole.

‘Miniscule airvents,’ Inspector Lovelace muttered in wonder.
‘My God, they’re clever! I’ll give them that. This is all lead casing: the
place is almost totally soundproofed! It’s as if it didn’t exist. Must have
cost a fortune…’

‘There’s a free table here, sir,’ said a pretty waitress,
coming up to Len, and directing him to the very middle of the room. The girl
was dressed in a teeny-tiny dress of black and silver crepe which did very
little to contain her ample curves – it was little more than a bathing costume
really – and Posie was glad of her dark walnut oil to hide the flush she could
feel spreading hotly across her face.

‘What can I get you all?’ the girl asked when they were
sitting down.

‘We’d just like the usual, please, Miss,’ said Posie,
holding her nerve and nodding with conviction. She didn’t usually smoke but she
took a gasper quickly from Dolly’s silver case which was lying on the table.
Sergeant Binny offered her a light: she hoped no-one noticed her hands were
trembling, and that the smoke caught in her throat.

‘Very well,’ nodded the girl, purring in approval. ‘Back in
a tick.’

‘I say,
you
should’ve been on the stage as well,’
said Len grudgingly. ‘Countess Faustina, my hat! You’ve got some nerve.’

In their own ways, all of them were busy checking out the
nightclub, while trying to act normally. The Jazz band up on the front stage
were coming to the end of their set, playing their final crescendo. The
nightclub was dark, lit by a single green revolving Pier Light placed at the
end of the stage; its beam, normally used to guide ships home, was powerful
enough to penetrate to the back of the place, cutting through the heavy
smoke-filled air.

Their drinks arrived. Five thick, syrupy sour-apple Martinis
– the drink of choice for all of London just now, it seemed. Len slapped a
pound note down on the table casually as if he had reels of them to spare. The
waitress smiled and flung some change down. Posie took a sip of her drink and
almost choked.

‘Look!’ whispered Dolly, excitedly. ‘Look who’s in the front
row!’

They craned their necks and saw a crowd of fawning women
surrounding a table right up against the stage. A man had just arrived. He was
shrugging off a big black fur coat, the green light illuminating his face for a
second: a beautiful face, framed by black hair curling back in waves like a
Greek God. It was a face currently printed on the cover of every magazine in
town, on billboards outside all the cinemas and on nearly every London bus.

‘Ivor Novello!’ said Sergeant Binny excitedly. ‘Jeepers!
Wait ’til I tell the missus! We just saw him at the cinema in
Carnival
–
a real film star!’

‘Calm down Binny, for goodness’ sake!’ said Inspector
Lovelace gruffly, trying not to show his own excitement. ‘Act naturally. As if
you see film stars every day of the week.’

The Inspector nodded around in admiration, surprised.

‘It’s quite the respectable gaff, this place, isn’t it?
Stars at every turn. Quite frankly, I’m impressed. I was expecting something
distinctly second-rate.’

As they watched, Novello ran lightly up the little stairs at
the side of the stage. The Jazz band had now finished, and Novello clicked on a
microphone, adjusted the piano stool and sat down. A spotlight from nowhere
swivelled onto his face. He turned to the audience, cracked a beautiful smile
and then started playing some of his well-known numbers from the time of the
Great War. The whole club erupted in applause and cheering. In all the
excitement Posie and Len took the opportunity to scan the crowd for Lucky Lucy,
a girl they had never seen in the flesh before, which made matters difficult.
After a couple of minutes of hard searching, Posie felt sure Lucy was not among
the many young beauties gathered around.

‘That’s Mr Blake, the Theatre Manager, over there at the
bar,’ she said to Inspector Lovelace discreetly. ‘And that lad with the shock
of spiky black hair, I recognise him too from the theatre. He’s Reggie. He
organises the sales of the programmes.’

On closer inspection it seemed that many of the people
milling around, even the barman behind the bar, were actually staff from the
Athenaeum Theatre, transplanted into this dim, green subterranean world as if
by magic. A cluster of well-known bright young things were led with much bowing
and scraping by Reggie the programme-seller towards a table at the very front
of the club.

‘Everybody who is
anybody
in London is in this place
tonight,’ Len whispered.

Posie nodded. ‘If Lucky Lucy is still in London, this is
where she’ll be,’ she said, ‘otherwise, she’s long gone and that letter sent to
me today was planted.’

Novello was standing now, bowing and laughing as the
applause rippled over him in waves. He was joined on stage by a tiny,
breathtakingly lovely blonde girl. The whole club seemed to take a collective
intake of breath. A spotlight hovered over her.

‘Is that
her
?’ Len hissed at Dolly, his jaw
practically on the floor. ‘Is that Lucky Lucy Gibson?’

Dolly shook her head, frowning. ‘No. Although she’s very
similar.’

‘Please give a big welcome to Miss Kitty La Roar. With one
of my new songs!’ Novello announced into the microphone. The crowd cheered as
he sat back down at the piano.

Miss La Roar was dressed in a silver-sequinned dance-dress,
and her every move across the stage made it seem as if an army of fireflies
were following her. She grabbed a microphone and jumped on top of Novello’s
grand piano and reclined luxuriously. At Novello’s first chord, she started to
sing upside-down: the sultry tones carried easily through the strange green-filtered
air. It was an old-fashioned dance song, and couples had started to move
towards a clearing near the stage.

‘Don’t look now,’ said Inspector Lovelace easily, his eyes
glued to Kitty La Roar at the front, ‘but we’re being watched. Several men on
the serving side of the bar have had their eyes fixed on our table for the last
couple of minutes. My guess is that any minute now someone will come across and
ask you some specific questions about your
exact
relationship with this
chap you mentioned, Count Caspian della Rosa. You might want to make yourself
scarce, Posie. Or else, find the ladies’ room…’

‘Or dance,’ said Len decisively, hauling Posie to her feet
so quickly she thought her flamenco wig might fall off. ‘Countess Faustina, we
are going to dance. They can’t interrupt us out there in front of everybody.’

As Posie followed him she heard Dolly start in surprise
behind her:

‘Why! The men watching us are
all
members of the
Athenaeum Theatre! Orchestra members! I know them all!’

Posie caught a brief glimpse of a length of plate-glass
mirror running behind the bar, and a shadowy line of perhaps ten men pressed up
against it, their heads swivelling in her direction, following her every move.
Her heart started to beat faster.

‘Relax,’ Len ordered, leading her onto the dance floor. In
one fluid movement he had positioned himself around her with the obvious ease
of an expert. He pressed his hand into the small of her back, forcing her body
very close to his. He led her around in time to the music, smiling calmly, his
movements liquid, only an occasional flicker of his eyes over Posie’s shoulder
betraying his nerves.

Posie hated dancing – she feared she looked a fool – but her
fear of being found out and her sheer relief at having Len with her forced her
to smile, to try and look like she was loving every minute of it. She was so
close to Len that she could feel the steady beating of his heart, and at the
small of her back, where he held her very tight she could feel…
what on earth
?

‘
What
have you got crammed into your cuff?’ she
hissed crossly. ‘It’s hurting me. Move your hand up a bit. Oh my goodness…’

She almost came to a standstill, knocking into another
couple as she realised with a jolt that Len was carrying a revolver.

‘A gun?’ she whispered crossly. ‘When did you start toting
weaponry around with you? This isn’t the Wild West, you know!’

‘No,’ Len said, turning her quickly in an expert spin, ‘it
could be a whole lot more dangerous. Besides, I always carry it with me. It was
my service revolver. I never gave it back.’

Posie gasped at this revelation, but at the very moment Len
twirled her again to face the audience, she saw that all hell was breaking
loose.

‘It’s a raid!’ someone shouted.

A stream of what seemed like hundreds of policemen were
rushing down the metal stairs at the back of the club and guests were running
in all directions, screaming. The long plate-glass mirror behind the bar
suddenly pivoted inwards, and the men behind the bar disappeared inside the
secret space it revealed before it swung firmly shut again.

‘Move, boys, move!’ Inspector Lovelace was shouting at his
men as they hurtled over to the bar in a great mass. For a brief moment Posie
saw the leonine head of Caspian della Rosa silhouetted against the bar, his
hands resting on the burnished metal worktop, surveying everything around him
with the air of a Captain on a sinking ship. In that moment she knew for
certain that the club was his. It was his baby, his masterpiece; the
mysterious, magnificent jewel in his crown.

Then there was sudden and absolute darkness. People were
screaming.

‘Get down!’ whispered Len urgently, and he and Posie lay on
the dance floor. She heard the ‘click’ of his revolver as Len loaded the barrel
next to her.

Girls were still screaming when the lights went on again,
but this time it was not the green Pier Light which was used; instead, a stark
unforgiving white light flooded the club, giving it the air of a bright
hospital ward, or a vast refrigeration unit, with the cold metal walls shining
horribly. Upturned tables and smashed drinks covered the floor. But thankfully
no-one appeared to be hurt. Up on the stage, Ivor Novello and Kitty La Roar
were still sitting as they had been before Scotland Yard stormed in, both
sipping champagne at the piano.

Over at the bar, Inspector Lovelace had handcuffed Mr Blake
and Reggie, and both were looking murderous. Several burly policemen were
throwing themselves against the plate-glass mirror, trying to break it down or
force it open, but it looked like a thankless task.

‘Nobody leave! Stay where you are!’ shouted Sergeant Binny
uselessly, as people scrammed in every direction. A cigarette-girl who had been
squatting down next to them on the floor obviously judged this as a good time
to go, but Len grabbed her by the arm:

‘We need to leave too, Miss. Any idea if there’s another
exit, apart from the main stairs to Radnor Square up there?’

The girl nodded and beckoned. ‘There’s an emergency exit,
down this corridor, past the cloakroom. Quick. But follow me, this place is
enormous and has hundreds of tunnels everywhere: you could easily get lost.’ 

Len and Posie followed, elbowing their way through the crush
of people who had started to file down a long, dark corridor. On their left a
series of identical small doors were cut into the metal walls, each with a tiny
crescent-moon window in the top. They lost the cigarette-girl in the scrum. Len
looked pleased:

‘We may as well try and have a nosy around while everyone is
tied up in that ruckus back there, don’t you reckon, Po? We won’t get the
chance again. This place will be closed down as a crime scene.’

‘What about Caspian della Rosa?’ Posie asked fearfully. She
had no wish to run into him after Inspector Lovelace’s spectacular rumble,
which she was indirectly responsible for.

‘Pah! Him and his cronies will be long gone! They won’t hang
around here waiting to get arrested. You heard that girl; there are loads of
secret ways out of here.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ Posie said, feeling uneasy suddenly. ‘I
can’t believe I forgot! What about Dolly? We should go back for her. I don’t
know if she’s safe.’

‘
No
,’ Len said in such a forceful way that Posie
gasped.

‘Why ever not?’

‘I don’t like her, I don’t trust her. And frankly, I’m
surprised you do so easily. You don’t know the girl at all! She’s too innocent-seeming
by half. Naïve. Likely it’s an act. Who’s to say she’s not in with this
mysterious Caspian della Rosa after all?
She
told us about tonight. Got
us to come here. It could all be a trap. Take my advice and stay away from
her.’

‘What? Don’t be so ridiculous,’ Posie exploded at him. ‘I’ve
never heard you talk such rot before. Why on earth would Caspian della Rosa
want to bring his fabulous house of cards crashing down on him with a raid from
Scotland Yard?
Of course I trust Dolly
. She’s one hundred per cent
loyal. I always follow my gut instinct and it’s never let me down so far.
Unlike yours...’