—
“Bloody hell, this is like being a queen,” Gertie said, luxuriating in the leather of the back seat of the Bentley. Nellie had thought it best they leave the Sphinx before the police arrived. “Too bloody right,” Gertie said.
“Where to, ladies?” the chauffeur asked them.
“Oh, just drive around, my man,” Gertie said loftily, putting on a silly posh accent. Freda and Gertie collapsed in giggles. They were bubbling with high spirits. Surviving a brush with death is a powerful tonic. Hawker smiled indulgently at them, remembering his own daughter at that age.
“Kingly Court, please,” Freda said when they had calmed down a bit. Gertie was already nodding off to sleep. Freda could have happily lived in this car. In the rear-view mirror she saw Hawker raise an eyebrow when he was told the address. “You’re sure?” he said.
Vanda was up when they arrived and said, “Christ, Freda, I thought I was seeing double, you’re like two peas in a pod.” Freda related an abbreviated account of the morning’s events and Vanda said, “Bugger me,” which was also something Duncan used to say, and Vanda used to laugh and say, “Would if I could, pet.”
Gertie climbed into Freda’s little bed in the cupboard and fell into such a profound sleep that Freda had to check that she hadn’t died a second time.
* * *
—
A skulking Sergeant Oakes cursed as he watched the Bentley drive away. Freda Murgatroyd was a problem. Oakes had thought to make her Nellie Coker’s problem instead. A dead body in the Sphinx should be enough to stop Nellie opening up again somewhere else after they took over her clubs. He had been pleased with the initiative he had shown. Maddox would be too, surely? But now it seemed that rather than solving the problem of Freda he had made it worse.
He could have sworn that the girl had been dead when he left her in that storeroom, yet here she was, walking, talking and sitting in the back of Nellie Coker’s Bentley. And not only that—there were now two of them, as if she’d multiplied in there. They were so alike that he didn’t know which was the real Freda Murgatroyd. Now Oakes had two problems on his hands.
* * *
—
“Sit down and pull yourself together before the police arrive,” Nellie commanded Ramsay. “Here, have more tea.” She added more brandy to his cup. “When they ask, nothing happened, right?”
“Right.”
“Remember—there was no murder.”
“But there was no murder.”
“Exactly,” Nellie said.
* * *
—
Frobisher arrived at the Sphinx with a uniformed constable in tow. Not Cobb. For all Frobisher knew, Cobb was also Maddox’s acolyte. Nellie’s Bentley was parked outside but drove off as Frobisher approached. The criminal fleeing the scene, he thought.
The Sphinx was unlocked and they entered unhindered, passing beneath a cheap reproduction of the mask of Tutankhamun and then down a steep corridor. It was unknown territory and unnerved Frobisher slightly. “Use caution,” he said to the constable. “If there is a killer, he may still be here.”
A nightclub was not designed for daytime. The unforgiving electric lights illuminated every tawdry corner. A few orphan balloons bobbed around untethered and paper streamers littered the floor. The cleaner had clearly not been in yet. There were two people sitting at one of the little tables, Nellie Coker and her son Ramsay. Nellie was drinking tea, the picture of serenity. Ramsay, on the other hand, looked pale and agitated.
Frobisher frowned at this little tableau and said, “I’ve had a report of a murder here.”
“A murder? Goodness me!” Nellie said, heaving herself up from her chair and advancing on him like a small tank, her hand outstretched. “May I introduce myself?” she said, like a gracious society hostess. “Mrs. Nellie Coker. And you must be Detective Chief Inspector Frobisher. We’ve heard so much about you.”
Frobisher was not for charming. “The caller said that a girl had been killed here,” he said gruffly.
“I’m afraid you were wrongly informed, Chief Inspector. I think perhaps you have been the victim of a malicious prank. As you can see, there are no girls here, only my son and I, and we are very much alive.” Ramsay nodded his agreement. “But you are very welcome to search the place,” Nellie added, sweeping her arm around the club as if offering it as a gift.
Frobisher sent the constable off to search every nook and cranny of the Sphinx. He was convinced that some evidence of wrongdoing would turn up, if not an actual corpse. But the place was squeaky clean.
“Found this, sir,” the constable said, “behind the bar.” He was holding a silver shoe aloft. Frobisher took it off him.
“One of the dance hostesses must have mislaid it,” Nellie said smoothly. “The girls are always losing their shoes.”
There was the sound of someone coming into the club and they all turned to the entrance to see who it was.
“Oh, look,” Nellie said, “it’s Miss Kelling. Have you met Miss Kelling, Chief Inspector?”
* * *
—
Gertie woke in the late afternoon, and because the cupboard was still bare Freda made sugar sandwiches that a “starving” Gertie wolfed down. Freda supposed that dying and coming back to life would give you an appetite. Jesus probably felt the same when he came out of his tomb. She was reminded of the big crucifix that hung over the altar in Florence’s church. She had been going in regularly to light a candle. You light them for someone else, not yourself, Florence had said. Freda was lighting them for Florence.
“You all right?” Gertie asked.
“Yes.”
Vanda, on her way out, said, “Well, you look a lot less peaky, pet,” to Gertie and gave her an old silk scarf to tie around her neck and hide her bruises. “Keep it,” she said generously. “It’s not real silk.”
Gertie sighed and said, “Well, I suppose I should get going.” She and Freda both felt rather deflated after so much adventure and Freda said, “Tell you what—do you fancy going to a show? I’ve got free tickets for The Co-Optimists at the Palace.”
The Box
Ramsay had been relying on Freda, not only to help him forge the letter to the bank, but also to rehearse him for his “performance” (after all, she was always telling him that she belonged on the stage). He had even hoped that she might come into the bank with him and lend him some of her fearlessness, but Freda had left with Gertie so he was going to have to go ahead without her support.
On the Amethyst’s headed notepaper Ramsay had written, Dear Sirs, To whom it may concern, I am afraid I am currently indisposed and am sending my son Ramsay in lieu of myself. Please give him access to my safe-deposit box. Yours faithfully, Mrs. Ellen Coker.
He had had to make several painstakingly slow practice runs at it before he produced something even half credible. It was like being back at school, writing out lines as a punishment. Ramsay had been deemed “uneducable” at Fettes and beyond, his place at Oxford notwithstanding, and he enjoyed imagining the look on his old schoolmasters’ faces when they happened to walk past Hatchard’s and glimpsed The Age of Glitter prominently displayed in the window.
* * *
—
“Mr. Coker? How can I help you today?”
He’d made a beeline for one of the tellers in the hope of bypassing the manager, Sneddon, whom Ramsay always found intimidating even when he was here to cash up the night’s takings from the Sphinx. No such luck, for as soon as the teller read the letter he said, “I’ll just run this past Mr. Sneddon, Mr. Coker.”
“Must you?”
“Standard bank practice, I’m afraid,” he soothed.