To his annoyance, Ramsay realized that he was on his last cigarette. He had consumed an entire packet since breakfast—smoking, he had discovered, really helped with writing.
In the dining room they kept a large alabaster box of cigarettes and when he returned from the kitchen for the umpteenth time with the invalid’s latest demands (“a fried egg, yolk still runny”) Ramsay stopped off to replenish supplies.
He couldn’t help but notice the various papers that were spread across the surface of the dining table. Nellie’s solicitor had visited earlier and they had spent over an hour sequestered with each other. Solicitors were high on Ramsay’s list of tedium (it was a long list), but he glanced idly at the table in passing. The Last Will and Testament of Ellen Macdonald Coker. Oh, there wasn’t anything tedious about that at all.
They all knew that their mother made a new will almost every week, depending on how she was feeling at the time—adding codicils, removing beneficiaries, thinking of new bequests, settling old scores—but no one had ever actually had sight of any of these documents, in fact they sometimes wondered if they weren’t invented by Nellie to keep them all on their toes. Kitty, for example, was told on a regular basis that she would be disinherited.
And now here was one of these mythical wills, on open view, unguarded. Was it a trap? Ramsay had heard Nellie go out earlier, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t left the will here to tempt him and the minute he looked at it she wouldn’t jump out from a hiding place and catch him red-handed.
“Draft,” it announced on the cover page, so presumably it had been brought to Hanover Terrace today for her final approval. Very cautiously, he lifted the page and turned it.
The clubs were to be divided between Niven and Edith, while Betty and Shirley were to receive a sum of ten thousand each and Ramsay and Kitty to have a meagre one thousand. (He was lumped together with Kitty? As if they were equal in his mother’s eyes?) The injustice floored him. Was that really how she ranked her children? She demanded absolute fealty from them, yet gave none in return! He grabbed a handful of cigarettes from the alabaster box and stomped out of the room.
“This egg is cold,” Edith said.
Still seething, he returned to the Remington and took a large swig from the bottle of Dr. Collis Browne’s chlorodyne medicine that he kept next to it.
It was night and the gas lamps flickered. The menace of evil lay on the streets like a dark veil. (Actually, this was really rather good.) Suddenly
Ting, ting, ting!
Oh, dear God. He could strangle Edith, but although it would be interesting to find out what it was like to murder someone, Ramsay wasn’t prepared to face Nellie’s wrath, let alone the “long drop”—as Jones would have called it—if he was convicted of it.
He shut the door to his room. Shut his ears as well. Let the invalid be damned.
Jones realized he must return to Taunton if he was to find out more. He checked the clock on the wall. If he hurried and the traffic was light he could make the quarter past four train. It would be
God, this was boring. Would it matter that he hadn’t checked the train timetables? How many people would know whether or not there was a four-fifteen train to Taunton? Only people who lived in Taunton, and there surely weren’t enough of them to trouble anyone. When The Age of Glitter was published, he might, he supposed, be deluged with letters from “Concerned of Taunton” correcting him, but they could probably be safely ignored. His publisher, whoever he was going to be, would probably deal with any complaints.
He took out his cigarette case and filled it with the new cigarettes. The sight of the expensive gold case prompted the memory of the spieler again. It was causing a continuous low-grade hum of distress in Ramsay’s brain.
Jones was on the hunt for one of Reggie Dunn’s henchmen, a mongrel of dubious breed called Gresch. The way to find Dunn was through Gresch and the way to find Gresch, he reckoned, was through his paramour, a lady of somewhat easy virtue who went by the name of Lily Benson and was usually to be found at home in the flat she had above the Coach and Horses in Old Compton Street.
He had made Gresch a Maltese. He may as well make use of Azzopardi.
Kitty threw herself into the room and started dancing around, cackling like a malevolent spirit.
“Haven’t you got anything better to do?”
“No.” She read over his shoulder, “?‘Chief Inspector Jones was not averse to the charms of a good-looking woman.’ Not like you, Ramsay, you’re averse—”
“Shut up, Kitty.” Ramsay threw a pencil at her. He missed of course and she danced out of the room.
Jones had to ring the doorbell several times before it was eventually opened by Lily. She pretended surprise. “Cor blimey, if it ain’t Mr. Jones, haven’t seen you in a while, not since this morning.” Lily was blonde, with an attractive baby face, marred by the hardness of her eyes. She was all curves and dressed in a way that emphasized every one of those curves. Her voice was coarse, however. (This was good!)
“What can I do for you, Inspector?”
“It’s Detective Chief Inspector to you, Lily.”
“Then it’s Miss Benson to you. What d’you want?”
“Seen your friend Gresch lately?”
“Not in an age, Inspector. We’ve not been getting on.”
“What about that club of yours, Lily? The one you’re a ‘hostess’ in?”
“Do you mean the Emerald? I thought that—”
“We’ve
The door to Ramsay’s room was flung open. Jesus Christ—now what?
It was the little scullery maid, Phyllis, who flew into the room and said breathlessly, “Come downstairs quick—it’s Miss Edith!”
“What about her?”
“She’s dead, Mr. Coker.”
Frobisher Unbound
Frobisher had been in a dilemma ever since Gwendolen Kelling had moved into the flat above the Crystal Cup. “Above the shop,” she called it, a phrase that seemed, liked so many things, to amuse her. How was he to meet up with her now that she was no longer at the Warrender? She could no longer call on him in Bow Street, of course, someone might easily spot her—the place was full of criminals, after all (on both sides of the desk). News of her visits would make its way to the Coker camp all too soon. Nor could he drop in on her in her new accommodation as he would undoubtedly be spotted by one of the Cokers or their aides.
They had arranged to meet via the written word, for although her flat above the Crystal Cup was furnished with a telephone, Frobisher was cautious about using it—what if it was a party line? Or who was to say that the Cokers didn’t have the wire tapped? It was not unknown. The Refreshment Rooms in Paddington station had been Gwendolen’s suggestion. “We should be safe there,” she said. “I don’t think the Cokers ever travel by train, and they’re quite territorial. Apart from their house, they hardly leave Soho. Their house is in Hanover Terrace—Regent’s Park—did you know that?” He did. (Of course he did! Did she think him an incompetent?) “I’m trying to wangle an invitation to go there,” she said carelessly.
“Please don’t do that,” he said. Hanover Terrace was the very heart of the hive. “It’s too dangerous.”
“It’s unlikely that Nellie would assassinate me over afternoon tea.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. Do you address her as Nellie?” he asked, surprised. It seemed very familiar for such a short acquaintance. Had she already been lured? It was not so much the Cokers themselves Frobisher feared on Gwendolen’s behalf, it was that she might succumb to the temptations they offered. Paradise Lost came to mind, they had been forced to rote-learn great gobbets of it at school. Satan in the form of the serpent, looking for Adam and Eve, or perhaps just Eve—his purpos’d prey, in bower and field he sought. He disliked Milton as a poet, suspected he might have also disliked him as a man, but admired the tenacity with which he stuck to his grand design.