The Dorset House Affair (7 page)

‘What a very brave thing for a young girl to do!’ exclaimed the field marshal.

‘It was, sir,’ De Bellefort continued. ‘When I heard her voice, I seized a crowbar that lay on the floor, rushed out through the back door of the barn, and round to the front. Elizabeth still stood with her arms outstretched, crying, “No, no, you shall not get to him!”’

‘What did you do, Alain?’ asked Lady Claygate. She was evidently enthralled by De Bellefort’s story.

‘My blood was up, and when the footpads saw me bearing down upon them like an avenging fury, they fled to the road. Elizabeth stood as though in a trance, and it was then that I saw the blood coursing along her arms, and dripping from her fingers. Those abandoned men had slashed her with their knives, but she had remained constant in her desire to protect me.’

‘Noble girl!’ exclaimed the field marshal. ‘I always knew that she was a true aristocrat. And it is memory of that episode, I take it, that is plaguing her now?’

‘It is. This evening’s event was her third serious lapse into a kind of mesmeric trance in as many months. She thinks she’s back at the barn again, protecting me from harm.’

Alain de Bellefort stood up, and looked at his host and hostess. Had that fairy-tale satisfied them? Evidently so. They looked both sorry and concerned. Elizabeth’s peculiar behaviour that evening would not be mentioned in Dorset House again.

‘We had planned to return to Normandy on Saturday,’ said De Bellefort, ‘but I think it would be judicious for us to leave quietly tomorrow. Elizabeth will be acutely embarrassed, and any further agitation at this time should be avoided. Thank you both for inviting us. I gather that Maurice has gone off with his friends.
When he returns tomorrow, please give him our kindest regards, and best wishes for his coming wedding.’

Elizabeth de Bellefort opened her eyes, and saw her brother standing motionless at the foot of the day couch where she lay. How long had she been there, in the quiet sitting-room of her suite? She remembered having been half-carried there by two gentlemen, after which Lady Claygate and some other ladies had gathered round her couch. She had fallen into a fitful sleep, awaking only to find a doctor present, a man who asked her no questions, and who did little more than feel her pulse. What time was it now?

‘Alain!’ she whispered. ‘What has happened?’

Her brother remained motionless, looking down at her. As always, his presence served to calm and reassure her.

‘Nothing has happened. You lost your courage, that’s all. Perhaps it is just as well.’

‘What do you mean? I shot him—’

‘Elizabeth!’ Alain’s voice came stern and minatory. ‘Let us have no more of this self-deception. Before ever you could summon up the courage to do the deed, you fell into an hysterical fit, and attempted to bar access to a door through which, I am convinced, you had never entered.’

‘But the body in the passage! That frightful little man will have discovered it by now—’

‘There was no body, I tell you. Your courage failed you, or maybe your better nature prevailed. Whatever the reason, you did nothing to harm Maurice Claygate, who is at this moment playing the gaming-tables with his dissolute friends. Look!’

De Bellefort seized Elizabeth’s reticule from the dressing-table, opened it, and withdrew the Webley revolver. He broke open the breech, and showed her the six rounds still loaded in the cylinder. She took the weapon from him wonderingly, and saw that it had quite clearly never been fired.

‘Come,’ he said, ‘the matter is closed. I have given the field marshal and his wife a plausible explanation for your strange behaviour, and have told them that we will leave for France tomorrow instead of Saturday.’

Elizabeth sank back gratefully on to the cushions. She could rely on Alain to solve all problems. He had always done so in the past, and would do so now. She watched him as he took a small blue glass bottle from his pocket, and removed the cork.

‘Elizabeth,’ he said, ‘I want you to remain here, resting on that couch, until morning. Your shattered system needs to be healed by a long sleep.’

Alain saw Elizabeth’s eyes fixed on him as he carefully
measured
out fifteen drops of tincture of opium into a small glass of water which stood ready on the dressing-table. It was quite a high dose, but he felt that the circumstances warranted it. There had been other occasions when he had acted as Elizabeth’s apothecary.

‘What are you giving me, Alain?’ she asked.

‘It’s laudanum, Elizabeth. I gave it to you once before, years ago, when you were suffering from a bout of neuralgia. This time it’s to ensure that you have a refreshing and restorative sleep. It will take effect within the half-hour, and you will sleep well into the daylight hours of morning. Drink it. That’s right. Now lie back, and I’ll cover you with these rugs—’

Elizabeth de Bellefort suddenly seized her brother’s wrist so tightly that he winced with pain.

‘Alain,’ she cried, ‘tell me what that frightful little man found in the passage!’

‘He found nothing, I tell you. You silly girl, have I not told you that there was nothing there to find? Don’t be so foolish. Do as I say, and lie back on the cushions. Sleep well. Tomorrow, we will leave this cursed place.’

‘It was a peculiar business altogether, Sergeant Knollys,’ said Arnold Box. ‘I don’t mean the official business, which went off
without a hitch, as they say. First thing this morning, I called on Sir Charles Napier, and gave him the letter that I told you about. He opened it, read it, and confirmed that it was the genuine article. So that’s the end of the affair of the indiscreet letter.’

It was towards three o’clock in the afternoon of the day following the party at Dorset House. Box’s sergeant, Jack Knollys, a giant of a man with close-cropped yellow hair, had come in from an assignment in Camberwell at 2.30. He had stood for a while by the fireplace, peering thoughtfully into the tall mirror that rose above the mantelpiece. The fly-blown glass was plastered with faded visiting cards and various pasted messages, but Box knew that his sergeant was not looking at them.

Jack Knollys had been ruefully examining his face, across which a livid scar ran from below the right eye to the left corner of his mouth, the bitter legacy of a revenge attack by members of a gang of forgers. Poor Jack, he’d always be sensitive about that scar.

‘Are you going to tell me about the peculiar bit, sir?’ asked Knollys, who had left the fireplace, and had seated himself
opposite
Box at the cluttered office table. ‘Or would you rather I didn’t know?’ His voice was quiet for a man of his size, and what Box called ‘educated’, with a hint of mocking humour behind it.

Box laughed. ‘You cheeky man,’ he said, ‘of course I want you to know. The peculiar bit, was that I had a sudden conviction towards the end of the evening that a particularly impudent murder had been committed, and yet I was able to prove to my own satisfaction that no such murder had taken place. Let me tell you about it.’

Jack Knollys listened carefully to Box’s account of the previous night’s firework party at Dorset House. It seemed to be one of his guvnor’s perks to be invited to keep a judicious eye on high-class gatherings of that nature, and the story of the indiscreet letter and the pockmarked predator had its own special interest.

‘It was the behaviour of that young woman, Mademoiselle de Bellefort, that was so odd,’ said Box. ‘She was terrified, and
utterly convinced that something frightful lay behind that door to the garden passage. When I tried to move her away, she gave a shriek that turned my marrow cold.’

‘Blimey! And yet there was nothing behind the door?’

‘Nothing. The passage was empty, and the door leading out of it at the end was locked.’

‘And what about this pockmarked brother of hers, sir, the French spy?’

‘There again, Sergeant, there was something odd about
his
behaviour, too. When he spoke to me, he was very high and mighty, very haughty, you know; but all the time I could see that he was trembling with fear. What had those two been up to? Well, perhaps it’s none of my business.’

Box donned a pair of little round spectacles and opened a file of reports that had been awaiting his attention since the morning. He knew that these glasses made him look older than his
thirty-five
years, but then, he only used them for reading. Sergeant Knollys began to write up his notes on the case that had occupied him that morning in Camberwell.

Box became absorbed in one particular report, which was about new proposals for the regulation of traffic flow in and out of Portman Square and Wigmore Street. Police work, he thought ruefully, was not all high drama, or sordid scuffles in squalid dens with the scum of the earth.

Towards half past four, the quiet of the office was disturbed by the arrival of a red-faced, sweating police constable, who was ushered into the office by the duty clerk. There was something about the visitor’s demeanour that made both inspector and sergeant give him their full attention. A man nearing fifty, his uniform was smart and well brushed. The insignia on his collar told Box that the man was from ‘C’ Division, out of Little Vine Street, Piccadilly.

‘PC Thomas Denny, sir,’ said the constable, saluting. ‘Warrant Number 406. Sir, my inspector, Mr Edwards, told me to come
here immediately, and tell you about the murder that I discovered at three o’clock this afternoon, at a house in Lexington Place, Soho. It’s a sinister affair altogether, sir, and Mr Edwards said you’d want to be associated with it. I’ve got a cab waiting, sir.’

‘Lexington Place?’ Box was struggling into his coat as he spoke. ‘That’s not far from Beak Street, isn’t it? At the far end of Carlyle Passage.’

‘Yes, sir, that’s right. What happened was this—’

‘You can tell Sergeant Knollys and me all about it, Constable, while we’re in the cab. A double murder, you say?’

‘Yes, sir. A lady and gentleman. Everything’s been left as I found it. Inspector Edwards will be very pleased to see you, Mr Box.’ The constable shook his head, and sighed. ‘As you see when you get there, sir,’ he added, ‘it’s a bad business altogether.’

5

Maurice and Sophie

‘Y
ou’d better tell us the whole story, PC Denny,’ said Box, as their cab turned out of Whitehall into Trafalgar Square. ‘Start with the beginning of your afternoon beat.’

‘Well, sir,’ said the constable, ‘I left Little Vine Street police station at half past one. Nothing much happened until about two o’clock, when I found a vagrant dossing down in the basement area of a house in Golden Square, and moved him on. I proceeded down Beak Street and into Carlyle Passage to take the short cut into Lexington Place, and there I found an abandoned hansom cab. I then proceeded—’

‘Just a minute, Constable,’ said Box, ‘you’re going too fast for me. Tell me about this abandoned cab.’

‘It was an old, battered vehicle, sir, with the horse still between the shafts. It was grazing at the roadside, where there was a narrow strip of grass in front of a row of workshops. An obliging shopkeeper appeared, and offered to drive the cab himself to Callaghan’s Cab Yard in Old Compton Street, and I agreed. They’d be able to recognize it there, and unite it to its driver.’

‘What do you think happened to the driver?’

‘I expect he got drunk, sir, and fell off the box. It’s happened before.’

They had left Trafalgar Square, and their cab had joined a steady stream of traffic making its way along Haymarket towards
Piccadilly Circus. With luck, they’d be at the scene of the crime in twenty minutes.

‘When I turned into Lexington Place, sir,’ said PC Denny, ‘I saw an excited crowd of people clustering around the front steps of Number 12, a respectable three-storey brick house, part of a terrace on one side of the square. A man in the crowd called out to me, saying that someone had been murdered in the house. I accordingly entered the premises, and ascertained that two people lay dead there, evidently by foul means. I sealed the house, and reported to Inspector Edwards, who sent me straight away to fetch you. He’ll be there in the house, now, I expect, with the police surgeon.’

Number 12, Lexington Place was dark and airless, its small rooms over-furnished. The hallway was papered in a heavy crimson flock, and almost filled by a massive coat stand. A door on the right led into a sitting-room, its walls clothed with the same crimson paper.

Sitting at a table in the window was a smart, silver-haired man in the uniform of an inspector, busy writing in a notebook. He turned as Box and Knollys entered the room, and rose to greet them.

‘Hello, Mr Box,’ he said, ‘I’m glad you could come. I’m certain that this case is something that you’d like to be associated with. Is this your sergeant? I don’t think we’ve met before.’

‘Sergeant Knollys,’ said Box, ‘this is Inspector Edwards, of “C”. He and I have worked together on a number of cases in the past. What have you got for me today, Mr Edwards?’

‘At first sight, it looked like murder in the pursuit of theft, Mr Box, but I think it’s rather more than that. Do you see those books ranged along the mantelpiece? Well, they’re all in foreign languages – French, mainly, though some of them are in German. And on the flyleaves of most of them you’ll find a foreign name:
Sophie
Lénart.
That, according to the neighbours, is the name of the woman who owned this house.’

Inspector Edwards motioned towards an open door at the far end of the room.

‘She’s in there,’ he said.

‘Sergeant Knollys,’ said Box, ‘will you go through those books, page by page? There may be something of interest. Then join Mr Edwards and me in the next room.’

Box had already become conscious of a smell, sickly, cloying and unpleasant. As yet it was only faint, but his experienced nose told him what it was. It was the odour of incipient decay, and it came from the room beyond the door.

They entered a kind of study, cluttered, over-ornate, and this time papered in emerald green. Against one wall stood a small writing-table. On the floor near to the table was the dead body of a blonde-haired young woman of thirty or so. She lay on her back, slumped partly against the skirting, and her contorted face still bore an expression of terrified surprise. She looked to Box like something which had been discarded as of no value,
crumpled
up and flung on to the floor. She wore an expensive black silk evening dress, and around her neck was a black ribbon, adorned with a small cameo brooch. She had been shot at close range through the chest.

Box was conscious of a measured tread coming from a room immediately above the study. Someone was evidently carrying out an investigation there. He glanced up at the ceiling.

‘That’s Dr Walsh, the police surgeon,’ said Edwards. ‘He’s already examined this body, and places the time of death at somewhere between three and four o’clock yesterday afternoon.’

‘What do you think happened here, Mr Edwards?’

‘Well, the young woman was sitting at that writing-table, reading or writing, so that she had her back to the room. The murderer rushed in. She sprang to her feet and instinctively turned to face him, and he shot her in the chest.’

‘Is the bullet still in the body?’ asked Box.

‘No. It passed through her body, and is embedded in the wall behind her. There is some bleeding from the rear wound, but little, as you can see, on the chest. There’s her chair, fallen over to the right. Her dead body fell backwards on to the floor. That’s what happened here.’

Box leaned forward across the body, and examined the
writing-table
.

‘There’s a little steel paper knife, here, Mr Edwards,’ he said, ‘lying on top of an opened envelope, but there’s no sign of a letter. And the envelope – it’s got no address written on it, and it’s never been through the post…. Ah! It’s one of her own envelopes: there’s a little pile of them, here, in this pigeon hole. So it may not have been a letter. It could have been a document of some sort, which she had filed away in that envelope. Whatever it was, it’s possible that she was reading it when the killer came in. Perhaps he
recognized
its contents, and took it away with him.’

‘There’s another possibility Mr Box,’ said Inspector Edwards.

‘The killer may have been known to this Miss Lénart, who admitted him to the house. Perhaps she was going to show him the contents of the document, and while she was doing so, he killed her.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, perhaps … perhaps she was a professional blackmailer, and whoever the killer was, he’d pretended to come here to pay her what she demanded. But instead of that, he shot her dead. Things like that have happened before.’

Arnold Box looked doubtful. It was a clever idea, but it was too early to theorize about this killing. There was another dead body upstairs to examine. Sergeant Knollys had joined them, and Edwards suggested that it was time to join the police surgeon upstairs. The two detectives followed him out of the room.

The same cloying smell of approaching dissolution met them as they entered the master bedroom, which overlooked the square. Lying on a wide double bed with ornate velvet hangings was the body of a young man in his mid-twenties. He was wearing a dress shirt and waistcoat, but his evening jacket was arranged neatly on the back of a chair, under which were placed his patent leather dress shoes. The young man, like the young woman downstairs, had been shot in the chest at close range. An elderly doctor, who was standing beside the bed, looked up as the policemen entered the room.

‘This young man was shot dead at about midnight on Friday night,’ he said, without waiting for any of them to speak. ‘That’s a good eight hours after the unfortunate female downstairs. There’s nothing else I can do here, so if you don’t mind, I’ll get on with making the necessary arrangements. I need these bodies at the Middlesex Hospital mortuary within the hour if I’m to do a meaningful post-mortem.’

Dr Walsh nodded to the police officers, and hurried from the room.

Box approached the bed, and looked down at the young man’s body. His head was partly hidden by a counterpane, which someone – the doctor, perhaps, or PC Denny – had thrown over his face.

‘It looks to me,’ said Box, ‘that he was undressing prior to retiring to bed, when our murderer rushed into the room and shot him dead.’

‘That’s so,’ said Edwards. ‘There’s the weapon, lying over there near the fireplace. It’s a Webley Mark II .445 revolver, standard British Army issue. Two shots have been fired. The remaining four bullets are still in the cylinder.’

Arnold Box leaned carefully over the bed, and gently removed the counterpane from the young man’s face. He was quite unable to restrain a cry of surprise. The body was that of Maurice Claygate, whose birthday celebration he had attended on the previous evening.

‘That’s why I asked for you particularly, Mr Box,’ said Inspector Edwards. ‘I knew you’d been on duty at Dorset House last night, and that you’d recognize him.’ He looked down at the body of the young man with scarcely concealed contempt.

‘He was to be married in just over a week,’ he said, ‘to a fine young lady from a very old northern family. But that didn’t stop him sneaking out here to Soho, to be with this foreign girl. Maurice and Sophie…. How touching!’

‘Aren’t you drawing conclusions a bit too early, Mr Edwards?’ asked Box.

‘What other conclusion
can
you draw, Mr Box? I’ve no time for a man who plights his troth to one woman in Mayfair, and secretly keeps another in Soho.’

Box said nothing. Joe Edwards was entitled to his view of the matter. He wasn’t too keen on this dead philanderer himself. He turned to look once more at the body of the young man whom he had seen, apparently happy and carefree, on the previous evening. Maurice Claygate’s face revealed nothing of his feelings at the moment of death. Composed and tranquil, his eyes were closed. The wound in his chest had evidently bled a little, as a congealed stream of blood was visible leading away from where the bullet hole appeared neat and dark against the starched white of his shirt. As Box made to turn the body over, Inspector Edwards made a comment.

‘There’s no exit wound in the back, Mr Box. The bullet must have lodged in the backbone. We’ll know for certain once Dr Walsh has opened the body.’

‘If he was getting ready for bed,’ said Box, ‘then he was going to spend the night here, and return to Dorset House in the morning. He must have known this young woman, this Sophie Lénart. I— Wait! I’ve just remembered something. It was last night, while the fireworks were being set off. I was standing near to Maurice Claygate when a footman appeared with a folded note for him. What was it he said? I can’t remember….

‘He read the message, and I saw him smile. He excused himself to his friends, and said that a little assignation was in the offing – yes, those were his very words! In a moment he’d disappeared in the crowd. He said he wouldn’t be long, and that when he came back, they could all go on to the Cockade Club. But as you see, he never did.’

‘So I was right, you see. All that talk of going on to a club was a blind. Maurice Claygate knew this woman Sophie Lénart,’ said Inspector Edwards. ‘I wonder who she was? Perhaps they’ll know at Dorset House. In any case, I’ll go through the rates books this afternoon. They’ll tell me who she was.’