9
The address in Southwark wasn’t a house but a basement flat, part of a tired-looking building in a terrace of similar properties, all skulking in a maze of narrow streets off the Blackfriars Road. Kids were playing up and down the street as Fallowfield arrived, full of energy in the joy of their release from family duties, and he smiled as a volley of snowballs hit the car on its way past. It seemed that the children were the only ones left standing in this cold, mid-afternoon lull, the footnote to Christmas morning and still far too early for the evening revelries to begin. As he parked outside the address he had been given, it seemed to Fallowfield that most of the city had retreated behind drawn curtains to its fireside.
He got out and stood at the top of the basement steps, noticing that the chaste white snow – undisturbed as far as the door – seemed out of place in this run-down part of London. There were no lights on that he could see, here or in any other room of the house, and he guessed that the flats above were empty or deserted for the Christmas holidays; either way, Alex Fielding’s most immediate neighbours would be of no use to his inquiries. The one window at basement level had its curtains tightly drawn, so he went straight past and knocked firmly on the front door. As he had expected it to, the house frustrated him with its silence.
There was no question that he had to get inside, through fair means or foul. He could waste time looking for a back entrance to try, or he could go with an instinct that the woman he was looking for was in no position to complain about forced entry. A second knock, and then a third, brought no response, so he went back to the car to fetch a jemmy. The wood gave easily, and he found himself in a dark hallway with three doors leading off it and a rear exit to a yard. ‘Miss Fielding?’ he called, his voice unnaturally loud in the silence. ‘Miss Fielding, are you all right?’ His breath fogged the air and he shivered; there was barely a noticeable difference between the temperatures inside and out, and the flat reeked with the earthy smell of damp. A man’s overcoat, scruffy and frayed at the sleeves, hung on a hook inside the door, and he wondered if it belonged to the photographer.
The room on his right – the one with the window to the street – was a bedsit, sparsely furnished with a couple of shabby armchairs pulled up to a gas fire and a metal army bed in the corner, unmade and covered in a couple of thin grey blankets, woefully inadequate for the time of year. Old copies of The Times were piled high at the head of the bed and used as a makeshift side table; a half-drunk cup of tea and an empty cigarette packet had been left on top of them, and there was a gas ring and kettle on the floor, but no evidence of other home comforts, and he guessed that Fielding lived for her work. Even so, after the festive atmosphere of the last few days it was strange to walk into a home so devoid of Christmas; the hardest of hearts and the busiest of lives usually succumbed to some grudging acknowledgement of the season, but here there was nothing – no decoration or card, no treat or luxury, no sentimentality of any sort. Perhaps she had simply been too busy, he thought, or had decided that any preparations were a waste of time when she was going away.
The smell in the flat changed unmistakeably as he walked further down the hallway, and he knew then what he was going to find when he opened the second door. Alex Fielding’s body was on the floor beside her bed. Her blood had drenched the threadbare rug where she lay, and the spray marks on the sheets and walls testified to how viciously her throat had been cut. The assailant seemed to have taken her by surprise because there were no signs of a struggle in the room; on the contrary, a half-packed suitcase sat neatly on the bed, filled with clothes that seemed at a glance much smarter than the pullover and trousers she was dressed in, and a new, emerald green evening dress – still with its price tag – hung on the wardrobe; something in its hopefulness saddened him. Reluctantly, Fallowfield covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief and bent over the dead woman. Decomposition had been slowed down considerably by the freezing cold temperatures in the flat, but the body was beginning to look bloated and discoloured. Outside, the sound of children playing in the street seemed suddenly absurd and out of kilter.
He gave the rest of the room a cursory search to make sure that he hadn’t missed anything that might tell him more about Alex Fielding or her killer, but there was nothing. As far as he could see, there were no cameras or photographic equipment of any kind in either of the rooms he had checked so far, and the third door led only to a bathroom, stark and impersonal like the rest of the flat. He went back to the room he had started in, wondering who slept in the army bed. It was reasonable to assume that Fielding’s killer had taken her camera and was, in all probability, now using it as part of his deception on St Michael’s Mount – but was it someone she knew, perhaps even someone she had lived with? Hopeful of offering Penrose answers as well as more questions, Fallowfield scoured the flat for anything that might provide a clue to the impostor’s identity or Fielding’s death, but every new idea – from the yard to the bathroom cabinet – drew a blank.
He was on his way back to the car to radio for help when he remembered the suitcase on the bed. On the off chance that Fielding was taking something more interesting than smart clothes to Cornwall, he stepped carefully around her body to examine the packing, but the only other items in the main compartment were two pairs of shoes and a wash bag. He had more luck in the side flap, where he found a notepad and a sheaf of photographs. The pad contained ideas for the assignment at the Mount, together with scribbled notes about the island and even more information on Marlene Dietrich – background research which proved little more than Fielding’s diligence. The photographs, too, seemed to be of the film star – nothing remarkable, just shots of her leaving a hotel or arriving at a social engagement, usually with a handsome escort on her arm, and Fallowfield flicked quickly through them, assuming that they were the photos which Fielding herself had taken for The Times. He stopped abruptly when he arrived at the last few images, astonished to see himself in one of them; he was leaving an inquest with Penrose, and he remembered the photograph appearing in The Times a few weeks ago, part of the newspaper’s coverage of a recent murder, where a man had killed his wife and three children in Kensington. Quickly, he laid the other pictures out on the bed, wondering why Fielding had been so interested in this particular case, but it soon became obvious that the connection between the photos wasn’t the case at all, but the man investigating it. Every one of the dozen photographs featured Detective Chief Inspector Archie Penrose as its main subject – at a murder scene or a trial or a police station – and some of them went back years.
There was no time to speculate on what any of this might mean. Aware that Penrose was waiting for news, with time stacked against him, Fallowfield hurried to the police box at the end of the street to telephone for help.
10
‘Who do you think did it?’ Marta asked, pouring them each an early sherry in the welcome peace of her room. ‘My money was on one of the other guests at first, when we thought it was just the vicar, but after what Archie told us about the woman from the museum, I’m inclined to suspect someone closer to home.’
It sounded like they were discussing the plot of a crime novel, Josephine thought, struck by the peculiar situation in which they found themselves: the momentous sequence of events that had taken place since they got to Cornwall was as shocking as anything she had ever experienced, and yet – because the people who had died were strangers, and they were struck by sadness and injustice rather than grief – it was impossible not to speculate. ‘I can’t make my mind up, but I do know we should have told Archie about yesterday. I was so worried about him that I didn’t think to say anything, but we could have discovered Emily Soper’s body if the housekeeper hadn’t come between you and your enthusiasm for tin mining.’ She frowned, staring at the fire. ‘I know it’s ridiculous, but Mrs Pendean was very keen for us to stay out of that museum. She said it was closed because of family commitments, and that’s obviously not the case. Archie said Mrs Soper was spending Christmas alone.’