Skylark (13 page)

I drew a deep breath. "I wish to see Milos Vlaçek immediately. I am his sister.
From Toronto." I don't know if I sounded Canadian. I'm pretty sure I didn't sound Czech.

The woman regarded me for a moment without speaking then fiddled with the control
board. "Mr. Vlaçek's sister is here," she said in clear BBC English. She listened. "Very
well."

She nodded to me. "Matron will see you in a few minutes. Why don't you wait over
there?" At that point her sense of humor must have overcome her, for she added, "With your
other brother."

I turned to the reception area. The young man who had given Milos the papers at the
Barbican Centre was sitting on one of the vinyl couches flipping through a magazine.

My adrenaline started to flow. I stalked over to him. "Hello, there. Where's Milos?"

He gaped at me. He had dark eyes, a faint mustache, and a slight overbite.

"Milos Vlaçek," I gritted. "Don't play dumb. I know you know him."

He stood up. "I beg your pardon,
madame
?"

"I saw you give Milos the papers. What have you done with him?"

"Papers?" His eyes darted around the reception area. "We can't talk here,"

"No? Why not?"

He started toward the exit. I followed, mentally cursing the high heels I had worn to
bolster my Canadian image. I was half a head taller than he was, though, so I stayed right behind
him, heels or no heels.

Outside it was drizzling, and the traffic hummed along the Fulham Road.

"Where is Milos Vlaçek?" I took his arm. He was wearing a leather bomber jacket
of the sort then fashionable among younger men. The leather felt cold and slimy under my
fingers.

"Where?" I repeated.

"Hambly," he muttered, or something like that. His eyes darted. "Who are you?"

"That's unimportant. All you need to know is that I can identify you to the police."

"I do not know what you are talking about."

"Milos has disappeared from the hospital, and the staff won't say what happened. I want
to know where he is."

"Hambly," he repeated. He was breathing unevenly, and his eyes still darted around.
"The papers. You mentioned the...the document."

"You know very well the police have it. Now stop evading me. Milos is a sick man. He
needs proper medical care. I want to know where you've taken him."

He was gaping at me. "The police have our document? Oh, no! That cannot be!"

I was going to explain about the copy--probably an unwise impulse--when he whirled
and hopped on the rear platform of a passing bus.

I stepped into the street to follow him and was almost run over by a taxi. The driver was
so agitated he actually tapped his horn, and I could see the elderly passenger waving a furled
umbrella at me in the rear window. I began to sprint after the red double-decker bus, heels and
all, but it turned north as I watched. The man in the bomber jacket jumped down. He was gone
before I reached the corner.

I started back toward the hospital, feeling like the fool I was. Milos had disappeared, and
I had just chased off our only lead to his whereabouts. If I returned to the hospital, Ann's Dragon
Matron would give me a scolding or, worse, hail me off to the police station for perpetrating a
fraud. The only logical course was to do what Jay would have told me to do from the first--go to
the police of my own accord and take my humiliation neat.

I caught a bus to the other end of the Fulham Road, because my respectable pumps hurt
like hell, and walked down Lucan Place to the police station. I asked to see Inspector Thorne.
Then I waited. Finally, Sgt. Wilberforce, cool as always, came for me and sat me down in
Thorne's office.

"Detective Inspector Thorne is not here at the moment, madam. Do you wish to add to
your statement?" He sat behind Thorne's desk.

The question threw me. I stared at his impassive features and discovered he did not like
me. The silence between us stretched. "I have nothing further to say about Miss Beale's death. I
came about Milos Vlaçek."

"Yes?"

"Do you know that he disappeared from St. Botolph's yesterday?"

Something flickered in Wilberforce's eyes, but I couldn't read what it meant. "We know
Mr. Vlaçek was discharged from hospital, yes."

"The man has a punctured lung. He can't have been told to go home and take it easy. Be
real, sergeant. Either Milos is in another hospital or he's dead. If he was transferred by police
order, I wish you'd say so and put our minds at ease. Mrs. Veryan and I are afraid he may have
been abducted."

"What makes you say that?" Cagy. He fiddled with a silver cuff link.

I threw up my hands. "I give up. I suppose you don't think I'm trustworthy, but you
ought to know that I just spotted the younger foreigner we told you about, the one who handed
Milos the Harrods bag Wednesday at the Barbican."

His eyes narrowed. "Where?"

"Waiting in the hospital lobby to speak to the matron. When I confronted him he ran off.
I lost him a couple of blocks from the Earl's Court Tube station."

Another long silence ensued. "Did you think to ask his name?"

"No. He told the receptionist he was Milos's brother." I didn't mention my own
imposture.

Sgt. Wilberforce seemed to make up his mind. Slam. His shapely hands came down flat
on the surface of the desk. The cuff links flashed. "May I suggest that you go back to your flat
and stop interfering in police business? Things may be different in the States, what with lynch
mobs and Guardian Angels and so on, but in Britain we frown on vigilantism. You are a material
witness, Mrs. Dodge, a suspect in a murder case. We're asking very serious questions about your
background."

I tried to hold onto my temper, out of recognition that he was at least partly right, but the
"Americans are not as me and thee" echo was too much.

I stood up. "Ask away. I'll go back to my flat and sit there. Meanwhile, think about this.
Milos bled all over my raincoat. That makes a difference to me. I care what happens to him. He
may be just a waiter, a nonentity by English standards, but he's a decent human being, and he
doesn't deserve to be written off because he's an alien. 'Wogs begin at Calais.' Is that the premise
here?"

He drew a sharp breath.

I looked him right in the eye. "Something has happened to Milos. I can't ignore that, and
neither can Ann, whatever you and Inspector Thorne may do or think, and whatever political
expedience may dictate."

I was glad of my Canadian suit and beastly pumps. I stalked out looking respectable.
Wilberforce made no attempt to stop me.

Walking back to the flat, I began to cool down. With every step my gloom deepened.
Wilberforce probably thought I was a CIA agent, and I had just laid a mouthful of rhetoric on
him that was bound to feed that suspicion. I'm a bookseller, I thought, making a mental speech. I
am a former Olympic athlete. I am wholesome, for Godsake. My mother is a poet, and my father
is a history professor, and I come from a long line of Quakers. I would no more kill Miss Beale
than I would kill a poodle. Bad thought. Road pizza.

I strode onto a zebra and brought traffic to a screeching halt.

I'm innocent, I wanted to shout, but there is a sense in which no modern person is
innocent. We make jokes about spooks and moles, but we continue to pay the taxes that support
them. We do not inquire too closely into our investment portfolios. We accept government
policies that violate our principles, because a majority agrees with the policies. We imagine that
the terrorist's bomb will blow up someone else's airplane.

Philosophy is poor company. By the time I reached my street I was looking at the
situation from the police viewpoint. Maybe I had come on like a vigilante.

I no-commented my way through the diminished but alert cordon of reporters and
entered the flat. Ann was poring over maps. "Do you know that it's only four hours by train to
Edinburgh?"

"No kidding."

She laid down the
AA Atlas
, which was the size of a small pillowcase. "What
happened?"

I told her of my encounter with Milos's delivery boy, omitting nothing, and did a terse
summary of my session with Wilberforce, too.

Ann wasn't interested in police procedure. "Hambly?"

"He said that twice, but his accent was pretty thick. I may have misheard. Is Hambly a
town?"

She consulted the index of cities in the atlas. "I don't see it."

"Brum." I poured myself a glass of water from a plastic bottle. London tap water
suggests something out of Milton, so we were experimenting with salubrious
eaux
from
Scotland and the Massif Central.

"Brum?"

"That is how native speakers refer to the city of Birmingham."

"Well, imagine that. I have a cousin in Birmingham. Alabama." She rooted through the
index. "Hammersley? Hampton Court? Hammersmith?"

I brooded over my spring water.

Ann was mumbling her way through the index. "Hamble. Hamsterly. Hanbury.
Hanley...Henley. How about Henley? That's not far."

"He said Hambly. As far as I could tell. Maybe it's an ancient Czech curse."

"Could he have been saying Wembley?"

"As in football? No."

She set the atlas down. "What was his tone of voice?"

I considered. "Impatient, as if anyone would know what he meant. He wasn't interested
in Milos's location. When I mentioned the papers he almost hyperventilated. He wanted to know
where they were."

"Did you tell him your father had a copy?"

"I just told him the police had the papers, and he moaned and said
oh, no
. Then
he jumped on the bus."

Ann got up and started pacing, which was difficult in the limited space available.
"Hambly, Hamble, Henley."

"I think they're going to arrest me for murder. Pin it on the nearest American. Just like
the journalists."

That caught her attention. "Now, Lark, honey..."

The doorbell, as opposed to the gate buzzer, rang. One of the Worths--or the police,
coming to take me into custody. The gate lock kept the reporters at bay.

It was my turn to play butler. Trevor and Daphne Worth were standing in the areaway,
Daphne glancing up at the reporters by the railing.

Trevor gave me a winsome smile. "May we come in?"

"Of course. How are you?" I was not in the right frame of mind for company, but Ann
positively beamed. She cleared her maps and guides off the loveseat and installed the Worths
there, offering coffee, tea, or sherry. We didn't even have sherry. They agreed to tea.

I sat on one of the kitchen chairs and tucked my legs under. "My husband's flying in
tomorrow."

"Splendid!" Trevor favored me with one of those charming smiles that had to be useful
selling Porsches.

"So you said yesterday." Daphne gave a short, sharp nod. "Apropos of your husband's
arrival, would you and Ann object to moving to the ground floor flat? We'd charge the same
rent," she added as if one of us had squawked. In fact both of us were gaping at her.

Ann recovered first. "I thought that flat was let to a French company."

Trevor cleared his throat. "It was. The
directeur
called, however, very agitated
over the scandal. He gave us a month's notice."

"I don't think you'll have difficulty disposing of a two bedroom flat in this area," I
murmured.

"In the long run, no. Meanwhile, though, we could arrange for you to sublet."

Ann said, "I beg your pardon, Trevor, Daphne, but I don't quite understand why you
want us to move." She shot a glance at her almost-felonious roommate and added, "That is I
could understand your kicking us out because of the press, but that's not what you're suggesting,
is it?"

Daphne had flushed red. "No! Good grief. The thing is..."

"The thing is," Trevor intervened, amused, "Daph and I get on better at a distance. I'll
take over this flat and leave her to Auntie's bric-a-brac. We thought you might not object to
moving upstairs. There are two bedrooms and a telly."

"And a telephone," Daphne chimed in.

I said slowly, "If you want the same rent I don't see why not. What do you think,
Ann?"

"My land, it sounds like paradise. How soon can we move?"

Daphne heaved a relieved sigh that fluttered a loose strand of hair. "Now, if you like.
Trevor and I will be happy to help you carry your traps."

We drank tea. Daphne gave us a small lecture on proper brewing methods.

Two hours later we were installed in the pied-à-terre, and Ann was on the
telephone giving the elder of her two sons a blow-by-blow account of his mother's
adventures.

The flat was quite a change from our basement cave. For one thing, the windows let in
light. For another, Ann had a room to retreat to. It had been a slight strain for me to have to step
over her recumbent form if I want a glass of milk at night, but it must have been a large strain for
her.

While I waited for her to finish her call, I sat in the living room and admired the French
firm's taste. The furniture was upholstered in what looked like, but--thank God--was not, the
hides of zebras. Pillows in burnt orange and ochre took the curse off the black and white. The
carpet, a businesslike clay color, matched the heavy drapes, but cheerful gauze day-curtains
blocked the stares of the curious. A black granite mantle served as foil for the tiny artificial log
in the fireplace, and someone had selected handsomely mounted prints of African animals for the
flat-white walls. One glass-topped end table bore what I hoped was a reproduction of a Benin
bronze. The faint scent of Gauloises under the odor of furniture polish lent a suitable atmosphere
to the hyper-masculine decor. We had moved from a cave to a lair. The only thing lacking was
the head of an eland over the mantle.

The bedroom was going to tickle Jay, whose taste runs to futons and austere Japanese
screens. I disposed my clothes in the armoire before falling on the lush velvet coverlet of the
double bed in a fit of giggles. Everything was done in shades of plum velvet, and a strategic
mirror in one corner of the carved plaster ceiling suggested what a peek in the bedside table
confirmed. A well-supplied pit of seduction. The thought of all those vinyl condoms was
wonderfully cheering.