Last Nocturne Read online

‘Inspector Metcalfe, as if it’s any of your business,’ Twisleton said.

  ‘Idiot,’ Batchelor spat and flung himself into a chair.

  ‘So,’ Twisleton continued, ‘are you going to come quietly, or do I have to call for help?’

  ‘Come quietly?’ Batchelor was ready to leap on the man again.

  Grand sat down more carefully and extended a hand to invite Twisleton to sit opposite. ‘This has all been a misunderstanding,’ he said. ‘I assume you do admit you do tend to look a little like Oscar Wilde.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Twisleton blustered. ‘He’s … well, he’s at least half an inch shorter than me. And fatter. And his hair is much more …’ He quailed under Grand’s stare. ‘Yes, perhaps we do look a little alike. But why did you think he was following you?’

  ‘We didn’t,’ Batchelor said. ‘We saw you …’

  ‘In fact, Daddy Bliss saw you,’ Grand admitted. ‘Until then, we had no idea.’

  ‘Oh.’ Twisleton brightened considerably. He had begun to worry whether he might be losing his touch.

  ‘And then when we did spot you, we noticed you looked a lot like Oscar Wilde.’

  ‘Who,’ Batchelor added, ‘seems to hang around our office a lot.’

  Twisleton narrowed his eyes and then laughed. ‘You’ve got Gan Martin working for you, haven’t you?’ he asked. ‘I thought I saw him going into your offices.’

  ‘We have,’ Grand admitted.

  ‘Well, that’s why Wilde is always there,’ Twisleton explained. ‘His current mad passion is for Martin. It will soon pass.’

  Grand looked puzzled, Batchelor suddenly saw the light.

  ‘I suppose it was him who coined the nickname,’ he said.

  ‘Correct,’ Twisleton said. ‘He uses it all the time. Martin must be about the eighth or ninth Ganymede since Oscar went up. He’ll get married or something and Oscar will move on. Happens all the time.’

  ‘Does Martin know?’ Batchelor wanted to be there when the penny dropped.

  ‘Doubt it. Not the brightest apple in the barrel, is he?’

  ‘He’s amazing at filing,’ Grand pointed out.

  Twisleton shrugged. To him, that was his point well made.

  ‘And he never forgets anything,’ Batchelor thought it was only fair to say.

  ‘Hmm. But he has to be told it, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Doesn’t that apply to everything?’ Grand wanted to know.

  ‘No. Of course not. I for instance, have been making assumptions based on what I have seen while following you. They may not all be correct, though I do think your housekeeper has something going on with the butcher, if that’s a good enough example.’ Grand nodded. So he was right, then. ‘But Martin needs to be told something. To read it, or see it as a fact, not a supposition. I’m surprised you’ve taken him on. He doesn’t have a detecting sort of brain, I wouldn’t have said.’

  ‘He’s been quite useful so far,’ Batchelor said. ‘He noticed some things at the … ow!’

  ‘Sorry,’ Grand said. ‘Hit you on the ankle with my stick, there. Let’s not get too official, Detective Constable Twisleton,’ he said. ‘You don’t really need the paperwork, do you?’

  ‘All right.’ Twisleton came to a decision. ‘I’ll tell Inspector Metcalfe you spotted me but that anyway there is nothing to report. But if you take my advice, stay off the Cremorne case. Metcalfe is taking it personally and he’ll start making arrests right and left any time soon, so make sure you’re not in the firing line.’

  ‘How did you know we were working on the Cremorne case?’ Batchelor said.

  ‘Well, I didn’t,’ Twisleton said, ‘but I do now. And don’t worry about Wilde. He’ll find someone else to batten onto soon. Hold on – didn’t he share a cell with Whistler after that punch-up?’

  ‘Yes. But surely, Whistler is hardly his type?’

  ‘No,’ Twisleton conceded. ‘But he’s famous. And that’s Oscar’s other preoccupation. One day, he’ll meet a man who is famous and beautiful and then the sparks will fly. See if I’m not right.’ He gave a tug at his jacket and retrieved his hat from where it had rolled under the table. ‘I’ll see myself out. Good day, gentlemen.’

  The urge came upon him again that night, that rising tension that made his heart beat faster and the blood pound in his ears. It was a fine night for a killing. No moon, just the pale glow of the lanterns and the mist wreathing the river. The ducks fidgeted in the bushes that ringed the lake and a dog barked somewhere Battersea way.

  There was talk they were going to close this place down. As it was, he had to wait until the keepers had gone and he had to use the hairpin he had taken from one of his models, long ago. He had quite a little collection now: Mabel Glossop’s purse; Clara Jenkins’s lucky coin; Evangeline French’s lorgnette. He even had Anstruther Peebles’s cigar-cutter, and he chuckled at that. They reminded him, alone in his little room at night, of the thrill of the chase; they helped him to relive it. He would make his selection carefully. The colour of the hair, the sway of the body, the angle of the head – everything was important, everything had to be just so. All that, that wasn’t true of Peebles; he was a mistake and – in the end – an interfering busybody who had to be silenced.

  Then, there were the books, and he had one in his pocket now as he approached the Cremorne. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. How many little women could he add to his collection before his luck ran out? But his luck would never run out, because luck had nothing to do with it. It was all carefully calculated, planned to the last minute. And the cake was in his bag, delicious and tempting.

  He saw them before they saw him; two patrolling bobbies of B Division, the fading light glinting on their helmet plates and buttons.

  ‘Evening, sir.’ To run now would invite disaster. He’d have to brazen it out.

  ‘Evening, Constable.’

  ‘Out for a stroll?’ one of them asked.

  ‘I wish,’ he said. ‘I suppose the Gardens are still shut?’

  ‘They are, I’m afraid,’ the other copper told him. ‘Some rather peculiar goings-on after dark these nights.’

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ he chuckled and they joined in the joke. The Cremorne had been peculiar for years.

  ‘May we ask what’s in the bag, sir?’

  He felt his heart jump and his hands, as he gripped the leather handles, felt like lead. He had never been stopped before, let alone searched. Had the world gone mad?

  ‘Of course,’ he managed a smile.

  ‘What’s this?’ One of the coppers held up the package.

  ‘Cake,’ he said. ‘I’d offer you some, only it’s the wife’s birthday and I’m late already. Wouldn’t do to arrive with half of it missing, would it?’

  Both men were married. They understood.

  ‘Well, then, sir,’ one of them said, ‘mind how you go. Oh, and wish the missus a happy one from us, won’t you?’

  ‘I certainly will, officer,’ he said. ‘Good night.’

  He continued on his way, listening to their footfalls fade. He glanced back; they’d gone. Then he doubled back on himself, past the railings and the rhododendron bushes. Then he was at the gate, its wrought iron curling up into the night sky. He checked left and right, then the hairpin did its work and he was in.

  He was not the only one who made light of the Cremorne’s locks. He knew that most of the harlots whose patch this was had something similar in their folderols to gain entry. Gates had been locked before, but it had never seriously hampered progress, still less damaged business. Ahead of him the lawns stretched grey, dappled now as the cloud broke and the moon peeped through. There was one – tall, angular, not his type at all and he veered away, pulling down the brim of his hat.

  ‘Feeling good-natured, dearie?’ The words sliced through his brain like a knife. He must be getting old – he hadn’t seen this one at all.

  ‘Not tonight,’ he said. She was squat and dark. They were all the same length lying down, of course,
but he didn’t want them lying down; at least, not in the way they meant.

  ‘Suit yourself.’ And she muttered something unpleasant as he moved away. The girls here may have had hatpins, but their customers didn’t, and men in the Cremorne after dark were rarer than hens’ teeth now. A girl couldn’t afford to strike out too often.

  There was a couple canoodling beyond the lake, an elderly gent who wouldn’t last long. He couldn’t wait because it was likely she would see the old boy off the premises and that would make his life very difficult. Another opportunity missed.

  Another girl caught his eye as he rounded the corner, following the curve of the pagoda path. She couldn’t have been more than twenty and he liked the way her breasts threatened to leave her bodice. She was walking slowly and he caught her eye too. She stopped and swayed, jutting out her right hip, and she undid her bonnet, letting her blonde hair cascade onto her shoulders.

  ‘Are you feeling good-natured, dearie?’ She was speaking the words, but not to him. A shady character sauntered out from the pagoda’s arches. He was tall and dark and he reached out to touch her arm. Coins twinkled in the half-light and they moved away, a couple, if only for a few moments, the melody of her laughter stifled by a kiss.

  Shit! He turned sharply and saw beyond the railings the patrolling bobbies he’d met earlier. He ducked back into the bushes. The red mist had gone. He could no longer hear his heart. There would be other nights, other chances.

  Time to go home.

  ‘Joe!’ Terence Saunders stood at the top of the basement stairs and shouted down into the depths. The morning post was still in his hand and he still wore his top coat. ‘The gamekeeper’s daughter!’

  The old man jerked awake, the voice from on high not what he was expecting from the Last Trump. He let out an involuntary, incoherent shriek. Saunders clattered down the stairs and flung the door open onto Joe’s small, frowsty room. ‘The gamekeeper’s daughter!’ he yelled again.

  ‘What about her?’ Joe took a while for his eyes to focus.

  ‘She’s been defaced. It wasn’t there yesterday and now it is. I don’t know how I can face Valentine Prinsep.’

  ‘Yes,’ Joe grunted. ‘I know how you feel.’ Years on the edge of the art world had made him less than charitable.

  ‘Get up. Then get up into the second gallery. We’ve got less than an hour before we open. The canvas will have to be moved. Come on!’

  Joe struggled into his socks and threw on his shirt. Remembering that there might be the odd lady cleaner upstairs, the Lindsays being philanthropists, he wriggled into his trousers too. When he reached the second gallery, he found his boss staring at the Prinsep, shaking his head.

  ‘I had my doubts about the others,’ he said. ‘The subtle changes to the Whistler and the Burne-Jones that Grand and Batchelor were talking about. But this; this is so obvious. Look!’

  Joe did. ‘What am I looking at?’ he asked.

  Saunders’s collar stud chose that moment to ping off, clattering against the canvas before tinkling on the floor. The man had gone a nasty shade of puce. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  Joe peered closer. ‘Is it the number of sticks in the girl’s brushwood?’ he asked. ‘Only I never counted ’em before, so I’m not the best person to ask.’

  ‘Number of sticks, my arse!’ Saunders let rip à la Stepney on the assumption that the pair were alone. ‘Look behind her, man, behind the daughter. What do you see in the trees?’

  ‘Er … lanterns,’ Joe suggested.

  ‘Lanterns!’ Saunders folded his arms. ‘Chinese lanterns. And where’ve you seen those before?’

  ‘Um …?’

  ‘For God’s sake, man.’ Saunders had now turned magenta. ‘In the Cremorne. Some utter vandal has placed The Gamekeeper’s Daughter in the Cremorne.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Joe asked.

  ‘Of course. You’ve been there …’

  ‘No, sir,’ Joe said. ‘Not for years. The last time I was in the Cremorne, they was throwing a party for that Garibaldi bloke. And that was a while ago.’

  Saunders turned to the caretaker. ‘I employ you as a nightwatchman,’ he said, acidly, ‘among other things.’

  Joe looked at him bleakly.

  ‘So what part of “night” and “watch” don’t you understand?’

  ‘Very Rembrandt,’ Joe muttered.

  ‘Last night,’ Saunders bellowed. ‘Where were you?’

  Joe pointed silently to the basement. ‘Except,’ he guessed what Saunders’s next line would be, ‘every two hours, on the nose, when I did my rounds.’

  ‘Every two hours,’ Saunders repeated, ‘so you visited this gallery, walking past this portrait at …’

  ‘Nine o’clock, eleven o’clock, one o’clock. Which explains why I had to be woken a moment ago.’

  He did his level best to stifle a yawn, but failed miserably.

  ‘And there was nothing untoward on this painting – these lanterns weren’t here?’

  ‘I didn’t see them,’ Joe shrugged.

  ‘Precisely,’ Saunders fumed. ‘So either you’re as observant as that picture frame or you didn’t do the rounds as you claim.’

  ‘Perhaps it wuzzn’t done last night!’ Joe was fighting his corner and for his livelihood.

  Saunders reached out a finger and wiped one of the lanterns that smeared across the canvas. ‘The paint’s still wet, man. This is all your fault!’

  ‘I …’ Joe was outraged.

  ‘You’re no use to me! I’ll give you one hour to clear out whatever you have in that cellar of yours and then you’re out. See me before you go and I’ll make your wages up.’ And he stormed off, stopping suddenly. ‘And get rid of that canvas,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to talk to Mr Prinsep.’

  Joe watched him march away. ‘I suppose a golden reference is out of the question?’ he said.

  TWELVE

  Matthew Grand was feeling a little more limber and had ditched the stick but had a new respect for artists’ models.

  ‘I think we have underestimated these women – and Anstruther Peebles, I suppose – when we say they were models on the side. It’s a real skill.’

  ‘Matthew,’ Batchelor could tell that this could soon get very boring, ‘you stayed still for a while …’

  ‘Six hours straight.’

  ‘… which isn’t actually a skill, is it? I’ve known reporters who stay so still at their desks there have been at least two examples where they died before ten in the morning and no one noticed until after the deadline that night.’

  ‘Not the same. But the point I am making, James, is that I don’t think Mabel Glossop and Clara Jenkins were moonlighting as models. They were pretty girls, true, but I don’t think real artists pick girls off the street. Caro said that Evangeline French was at a soirée and no one was looking down on her at all – the wives and mistresses treated her just the same.’

  ‘The fact that you say wives and mistresses like that shows we’re not talking about normal people, though.’ Batchelor, as a would-be novelist, wanted to be bohemian but wasn’t proving to be very good at it – he had a Puritan streak a mile wide.

  ‘We’ll pop into the office, see what Martin has to say for himself. He’s bound to have a list of models in his head.’

  ‘Not if Twisleton is right. He wouldn’t have extraneous information like that for no reason.’

  ‘Well, we can but try.’ Grand put his arm in the air to summon a cab.

  ‘We could walk,’ Batchelor observed.

  Grand clutched his back. ‘We artists’ models prefer to ride,’ he said, clambering aboard as the hansom clattered to the kerb. ‘You can walk if you want to.’

  Batchelor sighed in mock-exasperation and followed him into the cab. ‘It’s all right. If you insist.’

  And the cabbie flicked his whip and they were off, whirled into the traffic towards the Strand.

  ‘Sorry, sirs.’ Martin was distraught. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know any artists’ models, exce
pt Evangeline French, actual name Ethel Phipps.’

  ‘How did you know that?’ Batchelor was still impressed. ‘That hasn’t been in the papers.’

  ‘I went round a few galleries this morning. We don’t seem very busy in the office at the moment and with all the filing done …’ He spread his arms. ‘Miss Wolstenholme held the fort, didn’t you, Phyllida?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Martin,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Look, Mr Batchelor, Mr Grand, I can type without looking. Now I use the right fingers, the keys don’t lock or anything.’

  ‘Good for you.’ Grand was grateful that there wouldn’t be the grinding noise every few minutes, and also the need to pay to have the keys unbent.

  ‘I’m using the time I save to study Mr Pitman’s shorthand method. Alexander … I beg your pardon, Mr Martin, is teaching me the rudiments.’

  ‘Of course he is.’ Batchelor’s shorthand was rusty, but he was cross with himself for not having thought of it first.

  ‘So, apart from finding out that Evangeline began as Ethel, do we have any more new information?’ Grand looked around. ‘There’s something missing. What is it?’

  ‘I threw that dead plant out,’ Miss Wolstenholme suggested.

  ‘No … bigger. Oh, I know. No Mr Wilde.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him since he came out after his night in prison,’ Martin said. ‘I think he may have gone back to Oxford. Or perhaps he and Mr Whistler have become friends.’ He paused and seemed to think for a moment. ‘Oscar tends to do that.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s it, then,’ Grand said. ‘I must say, it does leave the office feeling a little more roomy.’

  ‘So,’ Martin got back to the point, ‘I’m afraid there was little to glean. Evangeline was a very sought-after model because she was incredibly good at keeping still, and also a genuinely nice girl, it seems. She made a good living, to the extent that she had her own suite of rooms and a maid and everything. Most of them have to share with other models or live at home.’

  Batchelor narrowed his eyes. ‘A good living from modelling, or …?’ he left the rest open, in deference to Miss Wolstenholme.

  Martin was quick to the dead woman’s defence. ‘Oh, just from modelling,’ he said. ‘The standard rate for one-off jobs is quite substantial, but regular models are also paid a retainer, so they can be available. It all adds up.’