Bright Young Things Read online

  Mickey took his prizes back to Scotland Yard to share with Henry. ‘She looks nothing like Miss Moran, but from what we know of the height and build of both young women there would have been enough of a similarity. The hair colouring is the same and of a similar length. We know from the post-mortem that she was beaten severely around the face and head, thankfully after her death, and for the purposes of misdirection. I still believe that a proper post-mortem would have revealed that this was not Faun, but without that it’s not so unexpected or unexplained that mistakes were made.’

  ‘In that I think you’re being too generous,’ Henry told him. ‘However, at least we know that there was a body stolen from the mortuary, so perhaps we should present this to Mr Mullins and see what happens.’

  Vic was duly brought upstairs from the cells back into the interview room. Henry laid the photograph of the unknown girl on the desk and Vic Mullins looked at it.

  ‘And who is this?’

  ‘It’s the girl you took from the mortuary at St Thomas’s. How much did you pay the attendant to look the other way? Or did you just buy him the alcohol and let nature take its course?’

  ‘And I’m supposed to understand what you’re on about? I told you, I just spun you a yarn and I never said I took anybody from a mortuary. So when are you going to let me out of here?’

  ‘When I’m satisfied. So prepare yourself for a long wait.’

  ‘What do you intend to charge me with? Look, Chief Inspector, I have been a very patient man, but I came in here and made a voluntary statement so under the judges’ rules you should have released me long ago. Not questioned me further on subjects that were not mentioned within my statement.’

  ‘A statement which you have since changed.’

  ‘But still made voluntarily. You didn’t arrest me – I came here on my own two feet. So I suggest you let me walk out on those same two feet. I will be making a complaint.’

  ‘You were cautioned, you made a statement. You have wasted police time.’

  ‘So charge me or let me out of here. My alibis stand up, don’t they?’

  ‘He’s right,’ Mickey said when he took a few moments out to discuss the matter with Henry. ‘I’m only surprised he hasn’t pressed this before. As to his alibis, his ex-employer is rich enough to have bought silence or collaboration. The story of them being in Yorkshire is proving hard to check, as you know. They were registered at the hotel Caxton named, but who knows if they stayed there at all times? According to Caxton, they went walking. It’s a place popular with walkers and fishermen and others of irregular habits who don’t necessarily return for dinner. And Mullins is right. We have gone beyond the bounds, Henry. While our superintendent has granted us some latitude, I imagine his patience will also be wearing thin.’

  ‘So we let him go, and we have him followed, and we see what he does next.’

  An hour later and Vic Mullins was on his way. Those following him reported that he had gone to his lodgings, and that was, it seemed, where he stayed.

  The following morning Henry discovered that he was once more the subject of newspaper reports. Not the hero this time but the officer who had arrested an innocent man who had come to make what he thought was going to be a helpful statement to the police – voluntarily and on his own two feet – but who had been cautioned and locked in a cell and questioned repeatedly, despite this being contrary to accepted practice and regulation.

  ‘They’re making a meal of this,’ Mickey said. ‘But how did they get these facts in time for the early edition? Mullins had no visitors when he was here, and as far as we know he sent no message out.’

  ‘So the report was issued from elsewhere but no doubt concocted with Mullins’ cooperation and dictation. His own two feet indeed.’

  Henry tossed the newspaper he had been reading back on the stack. He was beginning to feel as though it’d been a mistake to come back to work. He could have used his time better elsewhere and to better effect. He was making no headway here. He felt his efforts to have been clumsy, ineffectual. He didn’t blame the newspapers for their change of tune.

  ‘He will slip up, Henry,’ Mickey told him. ‘And so will Ben Caxton, and we will have both of them together.’

  Vic had left his lodgings by the rear exit and walked to the lock-up garage where his car was parked and then he had driven back to his employer’s house.

  Ben was in his sitting room and Vic sat down beside the fire and watched as Ben poured them both a drink.

  ‘It will be good to sleep the night in a proper bed,’ Vic said.

  Ben raised a glass as a toast to his friend. ‘But you must keep no more souvenirs,’ Ben told him. ‘And we must wait a while for the fuss to die down before it’s time for the next game to begin.’

  ‘And with a more satisfactory ending the next time,’ Vic told him. ‘No foolish accidents.’

  Vic

  She had asked if she could have a bath and Ben had obliged, bringing her downstairs into his own bathroom. Vic could see that she was even more unsettled, her eyes bright and feverish and she had grown unpredictable and so he was not totally surprised when she threw herself at Ben, hands like claws, going for his eyes.

  But her feet were wet and the tiled floor was slippery, and as she lurched forward Vic had made a grab at her and as she swivelled, trying to push him away, her feet had slid. Angrily Ben had kicked out, bringing her down heavily, and she had hit her head on the side of the marble bath and then lay very still.

  ‘You killed her.’

  ‘She killed herself. She slipped and fell and killed herself.’ He bent and touched her head. Her neck was twisted at an odd angle and it was evident that it was broken.

  Vic recalled the disappointment on his employer’s face. Ben had not done with her yet. When he had tired of his women he liked to end things himself, deliberately, not have some accident take that pleasure from him.

  ‘Get rid of her,’ Ben had said. He stood up and for a moment looked down on the woman with something like pity and then the look was gone, the hardness was back in his eyes and when he strode away there was no grief in his body. It was as though she had already been forgotten. Vic, as he had done so many times before, prepared to clean up.

  The game was over. It would be a little while before Ben was ready for the new one to begin. But it would, Vic thought. There would always be another game.

  TWENTY-ONE

  It was early February when something happened that completely changed the direction of the investigation. An investigation that had largely been set aside. Hot on the heels of Vic Mullins’ complaints in the press came a more measured but even more virulent protest from Ben Caxton who revealed that he had been a suspect in the disappearance and murder of Faun Moran. He had been questioned by the police but they had found no evidence because there had been none to find. He said in his statement released to the press that he understood the police must follow every lead but that he had expected them to do it with a little more grace. He had found Detective Chief Inspector Henry Johnstone to be rude and surly and could not help but wonder if Inspector Johnstone’s recent personal trials might have left their mark.

  Slow burning anger impacted on every aspect of Henry Johnstone’s life in those weeks. He knew he was unbearable to live with, to work with, just to be around, but he could not seem to help himself. He knew Caxton was guilty, Vic Mullins too, but he had been instructed to let things lie and that he had no real option in the matter.

  On the fourth of February he received a phone call from Patricia Clifford, Faun’s older sister. Her news was strange.

  ‘I received the oddest and most disturbing of letters in the post this morning and I think you should see it. It was from Faun and it was written to me just a few days before Christmas. It arrived in a cheap envelope, and the address was in a very childish hand. It was written on what looks like a folded piece of butcher’s paper but it is undoubtedly from her.’

  She sounded broken, but at the same time could
not keep the excitement out of her voice.

  ‘What does it say?’ Henry asked.

  ‘In brief, that she was being held against her will by Ben Caxton and she was asking someone called Martha, a very young maidservant from the sound of it, to post this letter letting me know where she was and begging me to come and rescue her. Henry, imagine. She must’ve been waiting all over Christmas and into New Year. She must’ve believed herself abandoned.’

  ‘And why has it taken so much time to reach you?’

  ‘That I don’t know, but I know where this young girl can be found. She apparently told Faun that she was going to be in service to some people down in Kent, people called the Philpots. So Faun must have given her this letter and for some reason she didn’t post it until now.’

  ‘Caxton will say that it’s a forgery.’

  ‘I know my sister’s handwriting. And besides she says there is evidence hidden in the room where she was kept. She kept some kind of written record and she hid the fragments of paper in the wainscot, there was a crack. She knew that she could not remove these pieces of paper without smashing the wainscot but she wanted to leave something behind in the hope that it would help punish the guilty. Henry, she knew that it was almost certain she would die if I didn’t come and rescue her. Oh my poor baby sister, what she must have gone through.’

  ‘Pat, you have told no one else about this?’

  ‘Only Violet. I would have told my husband but he’s away. Violet won’t say anything, you know that. We are motoring up to London this morning and will be with you soon. Henry, please say that this is going to be all right. That you will be able to charge them this time.’

  ‘I let you down. I’m sorry.’

  ‘There will be nothing to be sorry for. Not if you can act now. Henry, don’t take this the wrong way, but you came up against a man cleverer than you, more conscienceless and cruel. You were behaving in your usual honest manner, perhaps that was not enough.’

  ‘So what now?’ Mickey asked. ‘Henry, this is the breakthrough we’ve needed. Now we must find the girl and discover why she only just sent the letter and we must get a search warrant. They will grant it this time.’

  Henry picked up the telephone.

  ‘Who are you calling?’

  ‘Mr Caius Moran. And I’m going to suggest that he kicks up the biggest stink he can if a warrant isn’t issued. He can drag all our names through the mud, if that’s what it takes. He can phone every newspaper in London, Mickey, I don’t care anymore. I will not be beaten. The dead women deserve justice and I will do whatever is required to ensure they get it.’

  A couple of hours later they were on the train heading for Kent, knowing that back in London warrants were being prepared. Henry wanted everything in place, every fragment of knowledge he could get before going to the Caxton house once more. Briefly, he had spoken to Pat and read the letter when she had arrived at Scotland Yard, and then handed her over to his superintendent. She had spoken to her father and for once the two of them were in total agreement. They would, he reckoned, make a formidable pair.

  Henry had been to Kent once before; he knew that the entire constabulary owned only the one car and so he had made no attempt to get a police driver, but declared that they would hire a taxi at the station, and Pat had pressed money on him saying that they had no idea quite how far away the Philpot house might be. He had not called ahead, just in case they should contact Ben Caxton. With luck, the arrest of Ben Caxton and Vic Mullins would happen more or less at the same time as they reached the Philpots and Henry had asked that the search not be made until he could return. He could allow others to make the arrests but did not feel that he could bear to be absent from that final discovery.

  The Philpot house was a red-brick affair, not large or grand but more like an overgrown farmhouse. It felt friendly as did Mrs Philpot and Henry had a hard time understanding that her family were genuine friends of Caxton’s. But then he reminded himself that the man could be charming when it suited him.

  Mrs Philpot was puzzled, but she called Martha from the kitchen and told her that the gentlemen were police officers but that she was not in any trouble. Martha, Henry suddenly realized, was indeed just a child. A little slip of a girl who burst into tears at the sight of the police officers and said she was ‘Sorry,’ but the lady had said no one must handle the letter except for Martha, and she must be the one to post it and she’d had no opportunity.

  ‘But Martha, you know that the post is taken from here once a day, that Miles takes it. If you had a letter to post he could have taken it for you.’

  ‘The lady was frightened, and she was so unwell, I didn’t know she ever would be well again. Mr Caxton was meant to be looking after her, but the lady said that she wanted to go home. She asked me specially if I would post this letter, but I didn’t get a day off, not till the day before yesterday, when I had a half day and I went into town. I walked all the way there and all the way back. I promised the young lady that I would post the letter, and not give it to anyone else. Did I do wrong, sir?’

  ‘You did your best,’ Mickey said gently. ‘Now we need you to sit down and write everything you remember about this young lady and the circumstances of how you met her. Everything you can think about, you understand?’

  ‘My writing’s ain’t so good, sir. But I’ll do my best. I’m not in trouble with you, am I, ma’am?’

  ‘No, I’m certain you’re not. Martha, Cook will help you, I will make sure of that later. You can tell her what you need to put and she will help you set the words down.’

  Martha was dismissed, still obviously distressed.

  ‘Now I want to know what’s going on.’

  ‘First I need to use your telephone,’ Henry told her.

  ‘Very well, if you must. But I deserve an explanation.’

  She did indeed, Henry thought, but she was not going to like it one little bit.

  An hour later they were back at the railway station, Mrs Philpot having allowed the use of her car and driver to get back there. They had briefly outlined the story and she had declared herself unconvinced but Henry could see that there was something at the back of her mind that made her wonder.

  ‘I’ve been reading all about this in the newspapers,’ she told him. ‘I must say I don’t think you’ve acquitted yourself particularly well.’

  ‘I’m hoping to do better now,’ Henry told her.

  Later, much later, after a train journey, and what felt like an age by car, they were once more at the Caxton residence but this time all of the lights were on, and there were police cars in front of the house.

  ‘So, where do we begin?’ Henry wondered.

  ‘In that study of his, opening that hidden door on the wall opposite the little office. I’ll wager that’s where she was kept. And I’ll wager that Clarke knows how to open it. And that he’d rather open it than have us break it down.’

  In the room above the study there was a narrow bed, a table and a wooden chair. Barred windows suggested it had once been a nursery but there was nothing of childhood or play in this space now. Henry was reminded of the bedroom at the top of a tall house where Melissa had been held prisoner before being taken to the damp, dark cellar where Henry had eventually found her. This space was not damp, but neither was it warm. The fireplace didn’t look as though it had been used in a long time. There was no comfort here.

  The room was panelled in scuffed, dark wood and there, beside the bed, was a panel with a long, narrow crack as had been described in the letter. Henry could imagine the despair of the girl imprisoned here. She could stand on the bed and see out of the window but the rest of the house would have been totally cut off, all sound deadened, all sense of human contact removed.

  Apart from little Martha. And she, as Mickey had said, had done her best. Though it transpired her best had probably only increased the agony as Faun waited for her sister to come and find her. Did she think … she must have thought, as Pat had said, that she had been utterl
y abandoned.

  ‘Help me pull the bed away from the wall.’

  ‘There are scratches on the floor and a broken microscope slide,’ Mickey said. He knelt to examine them. ‘She must have tried to keep track of the days. Poor little scrap. There are pencil shavings too and scrapings of the lead. Henry, I think she used that bit of glass to sharpen the point. So where did she hide the pencil and the paper?’

  Henry pulled the thin, flock mattress from the bedframe. She had cut a small slit with the glass and concealed her precious pencil and paper inside. But clearly she had desired a safer spot for her writing.

  Taking out his penknife, Henry slid it into the crack in the timber and levered a section free. The wood splintered and gave way with a loud snap. Behind the panel were a dozen or so slips of paper. Some the size of his hand, some larger, obviously torn from sections of butcher’s paper; Martha must have saved the unstained sections. There were also two flimsy sheets of cheap writing paper, carefully detached from a pad. The glue still visible at one edge. They were covered in writing, words packed close and small. She had covered every available space.

  ‘Martha tried to do her best to help,’ Mickey said. ‘But the poor chick must have felt her loyalties divided between what she perceived as a kind master and a sick woman in need of compassion.’ He paused, then asked softly, ‘What do you think they did to her up here?’

  ‘The post-mortem told a story of rape and abuse, Mickey, even if the surgeon chose to couch his report in gentler terms.’

  Henry sat with his back against the panelled wall and began to read. He skimmed the first three pages and then handed the whole stack to Mickey as though he could not bear to examine the rest. ‘But we have them now, Mickey. Alibis or not, we have them both.’

  Epilogue

  ‘I wish we could provide her with a headstone. A proper one bearing her name and age and not just the date of her death,’ Cynthia said.

  ‘One day we might discover who she was,’ Mickey told her. ‘At least she now has a proper grave in a proper graveyard, and if we ever find her family we can bring them here.’