The Dorset House Affair Read online

  ‘And what did your informant tell you about her?’ asked the second lady. ‘Of course, I shan’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Well, it was just that this Elizabeth de Bellefort has a history of odd behaviour – hallucinations, or something. She was always in and out of institutions when she was a girl. Perhaps it was that, tonight, in the vestibule? A vision, you know. She may have imagined that something unpleasant was lurking behind the door, and reacted accordingly.’

  ‘So that’s why Lady Claygate didn’t want Maurice to marry her! Well, well, I never knew that….’

  Box watched as the first lady’s husband joined her and her friend. He was a stout, apoplectic man in his sixties, with an angry red face and protuberant eyes.

  ‘Ah! There you are, Maude, and you, Carrie. What an extraordinary business.’

  ‘You mean Mademoiselle de Beliefort’s vision?’ asked his wife.

  ‘Vision fiddlesticks. I’m talking of young Maurice Claygate. Hang it all, Maude, his father throws this grand affair for his birthday, and he doesn’t even stay till the end! He was supposed to make a little speech from the dais, and then we were to drink a final toast to him in old Claygate’s champagne. But no – damn it all, Maude, the fellow slopes off with his chums to play the gaming-tables till dawn! His brother Major Edwin Claygate had to make the speech in his place. Damn bad form….’

  Within the half-hour, Dorset Gardens were deserted. It was time for Box to make his way back to King James’s Rents, where he would stay in the upstairs bunks for the night. The indiscreet letter from the French minister’s foolish wife would not leave his possession until he had handed it over to Sir Charles Napier next morning.

  Field Marshal Claygate and his wife Margaret sat in the private parlour of Dorset House, and listened to the powerful, sinuous tones of Alain de Bellefort as he wove an elaborate apology for his sister’s hysterical behaviour in the vestibule. It was nearly midnight.

  Earlier, a doctor had been summoned to examine the prostrate young woman, and he had agreed at once with her brother that she must have experienced a simple visual or auditory hallucination followed by a fainting fit. There was nothing to worry about. He had accepted a sovereign in payment for his brief consultation, and had hurried away.

  ‘I feel that I owe you both an apology and an explanation for my sister’s conduct this evening,’ said De Bellefort. ‘When we received your kind invitation to attend the birthday celebration, I allowed my eagerness to accept to overcome my prudence. Elizabeth, you see, had not been well in her mind for many months.’

  ‘You should have told, us, Alain,’ said the old field marshal. ‘We would have understood. Not well in her mind, you say? Dear me! Meanwhile, there’s no cause whatever to make an apology.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said Lady Claygate. ‘Poor girl! I expect the close atmosphere of the saloon, and the shattering noise of those fireworks contributed to the onset of that fit of hysterics.’

  ‘There’s rather more to it than that, Lady Claygate,’ De Bellefort continued. ‘Let me explain. When I was seventeen, and Elizabeth was twelve, a band of footpads waylaid me on the road as I was returning to the manor from the neighbouring town of Saint-Martin de Fontenay. I was carrying a bag containing the quarterly rent owed by tenants of ours. I took to my heels, and fled into a barn that lay just inside the demesne. The cutthroats – for that is what they were – ran after me, and just as they reached the barn, my sister appeared from the house. Knowing what danger I was in, she spread-eagled herself across the barn doors, crying, “No, villains, you shall not get to him!”’

  ‘What a very brave thing for a young girl to do!’ exclaimed the field marshal.

  ‘It was, sir,’ De Bellefort continued. ‘When I heard her voice, I seized a crowbar that lay on the floor, rushed out through the back door of the barn, and round to the front. Elizabeth still stood with her arms outstretched, crying, “No, no, you shall not get to him!”’

  ‘What did you do, Alain?’ asked Lady Claygate. She was evidently enthralled by De Bellefort’s story.

  ‘My blood was up, and when the footpads saw me bearing down upon them like an avenging fury, they fled to the road. Elizabeth stood as though in a trance, and it was then that I saw the blood coursing along her arms, and dripping from her fingers. Those abandoned men had slashed her with their knives, but she had remained constant in her desire to protect me.’

  ‘Noble girl!’ exclaimed the field marshal. ‘I always knew that she was a true aristocrat. And it is memory of that episode, I take it, that is plaguing her now?’

  ‘It is. This evening’s event was her third serious lapse into a kind of mesmeric trance in as many months. She thinks she’s back at the barn again, protecting me from harm.’

  Alain de Bellefort stood up, and looked at his host and hostess. Had that fairy-tale satisfied them? Evidently so. They looked both sorry and concerned. Elizabeth’s peculiar behaviour that evening would not be mentioned in Dorset House again.

  ‘We had planned to return to Normandy on Saturday,’ said De Bellefort, ‘but I think it would be judicious for us to leave quietly tomorrow. Elizabeth will be acutely embarrassed, and any further agitation at this time should be avoided. Thank you both for inviting us. I gather that Maurice has gone off with his friends. When he returns tomorrow, please give him our kindest regards, and best wishes for his coming wedding.’

  Elizabeth de Bellefort opened her eyes, and saw her brother standing motionless at the foot of the day couch where she lay. How long had she been there, in the quiet sitting-room of her suite? She remembered having been half-carried there by two gentlemen, after which Lady Claygate and some other ladies had gathered round her couch. She had fallen into a fitful sleep, awaking only to find a doctor present, a man who asked her no questions, and who did little more than feel her pulse. What time was it now?

  ‘Alain!’ she whispered. ‘What has happened?’

  Her brother remained motionless, looking down at her. As always, his presence served to calm and reassure her.

  ‘Nothing has happened. You lost your courage, that’s all. Perhaps it is just as well.’

  ‘What do you mean? I shot him—’

  ‘Elizabeth!’ Alain’s voice came stern and minatory. ‘Let us have no more of this self-deception. Before ever you could summon up the courage to do the deed, you fell into an hysterical fit, and attempted to bar access to a door through which, I am convinced, you had never entered.’

  ‘But the body in the passage! That frightful little man will have discovered it by now—’

  ‘There was no body, I tell you. Your courage failed you, or maybe your better nature prevailed. Whatever the reason, you did nothing to harm Maurice Claygate, who is at this moment playing the gaming-tables with his dissolute friends. Look!’

  De Bellefort seized Elizabeth’s reticule from the dressing-table, opened it, and withdrew the Webley revolver. He broke open the breech, and showed her the six rounds still loaded in the cylinder. She took the weapon from him wonderingly, and saw that it had quite clearly never been fired.

  ‘Come,’ he said, ‘the matter is closed. I have given the field marshal and his wife a plausible explanation for your strange behaviour, and have told them that we will leave for France tomorrow instead of Saturday.’

  Elizabeth sank back gratefully on to the cushions. She could rely on Alain to solve all problems. He had always done so in the past, and would do so now. She watched him as he took a small blue glass bottle from his pocket, and removed the cork.

  ‘Elizabeth,’ he said, ‘I want you to remain here, resting on that couch, until morning. Your shattered system needs to be healed by a long sleep.’

  Alain saw Elizabeth’s eyes fixed on him as he carefully measured out fifteen drops of tincture of opium into a small glass of water which stood ready on the dressing-table. It was quite a high dose, but he felt that the circumstances warranted it. There had been other occasions when he had acted as Elizabeth’s apothecary.

  ‘What are you giving me, Alain?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s laudanum, Elizabeth. I gave it to you once before, years ago, when you were suffering from a bout of neuralgia. This time it’s to ensure that you have a refreshing and restorative sleep. It will take effect within the half-hour, and you will sleep well into the daylight hours of morning. Drink it. That’s right. Now lie back, and I’ll cover you with these rugs—’

  Elizabeth de Bellefort suddenly seized her brother’s wrist so tightly that he winced with pain.

  ‘Alain,’ she cried, ‘tell me what that frightful little man found in the passage!’

  ‘He found nothing, I tell you. You silly girl, have I not told you that there was nothing there to find? Don’t be so foolish. Do as I say, and lie back on the cushions. Sleep well. Tomorrow, we will leave this cursed place.’

  ‘It was a peculiar business altogether, Sergeant Knollys,’ said Arnold Box. ‘I don’t mean the official business, which went off without a hitch, as they say. First thing this morning, I called on Sir Charles Napier, and gave him the letter that I told you about. He opened it, read it, and confirmed that it was the genuine article. So that’s the end of the affair of the indiscreet letter.’

  It was towards three o’clock in the afternoon of the day following the party at Dorset House. Box’s sergeant, Jack Knollys, a giant of a man with close-cropped yellow hair, had come in from an assignment in Camberwell at 2.30. He had stood for a while by the fireplace, peering thoughtfully into the tall mirror that rose above the mantelpiece. The fly-blown glass was plastered with faded visiting cards and various pasted messages, but Box knew that his sergeant was not looking at them.

  Jack Knollys had been ruefully examining his face, across which a livid scar ran from below the right eye to
the left corner of his mouth, the bitter legacy of a revenge attack by members of a gang of forgers. Poor Jack, he’d always be sensitive about that scar.

  ‘Are you going to tell me about the peculiar bit, sir?’ asked Knollys, who had left the fireplace, and had seated himself opposite Box at the cluttered office table. ‘Or would you rather I didn’t know?’ His voice was quiet for a man of his size, and what Box called ‘educated’, with a hint of mocking humour behind it.

  Box laughed. ‘You cheeky man,’ he said, ‘of course I want you to know. The peculiar bit, was that I had a sudden conviction towards the end of the evening that a particularly impudent murder had been committed, and yet I was able to prove to my own satisfaction that no such murder had taken place. Let me tell you about it.’

  Jack Knollys listened carefully to Box’s account of the previous night’s firework party at Dorset House. It seemed to be one of his guvnor’s perks to be invited to keep a judicious eye on high-class gatherings of that nature, and the story of the indiscreet letter and the pockmarked predator had its own special interest.

  ‘It was the behaviour of that young woman, Mademoiselle de Bellefort, that was so odd,’ said Box. ‘She was terrified, and utterly convinced that something frightful lay behind that door to the garden passage. When I tried to move her away, she gave a shriek that turned my marrow cold.’

  ‘Blimey! And yet there was nothing behind the door?’

  ‘Nothing. The passage was empty, and the door leading out of it at the end was locked.’

  ‘And what about this pockmarked brother of hers, sir, the French spy?’

  ‘There again, Sergeant, there was something odd about his behaviour, too. When he spoke to me, he was very high and mighty, very haughty, you know; but all the time I could see that he was trembling with fear. What had those two been up to? Well, perhaps it’s none of my business.’

  Box donned a pair of little round spectacles and opened a file of reports that had been awaiting his attention since the morning. He knew that these glasses made him look older than his thirty-five years, but then, he only used them for reading. Sergeant Knollys began to write up his notes on the case that had occupied him that morning in Camberwell.

  Box became absorbed in one particular report, which was about new proposals for the regulation of traffic flow in and out of Portman Square and Wigmore Street. Police work, he thought ruefully, was not all high drama, or sordid scuffles in squalid dens with the scum of the earth.

  Towards half past four, the quiet of the office was disturbed by the arrival of a red-faced, sweating police constable, who was ushered into the office by the duty clerk. There was something about the visitor’s demeanour that made both inspector and sergeant give him their full attention. A man nearing fifty, his uniform was smart and well brushed. The insignia on his collar told Box that the man was from ‘C’ Division, out of Little Vine Street, Piccadilly.

  ‘PC Thomas Denny, sir,’ said the constable, saluting. ‘Warrant Number 406. Sir, my inspector, Mr Edwards, told me to come here immediately, and tell you about the murder that I discovered at three o’clock this afternoon, at a house in Lexington Place, Soho. It’s a sinister affair altogether, sir, and Mr Edwards said you’d want to be associated with it. I’ve got a cab waiting, sir.’

  ‘Lexington Place?’ Box was struggling into his coat as he spoke. ‘That’s not far from Beak Street, isn’t it? At the far end of Carlyle Passage.’

  ‘Yes, sir, that’s right. What happened was this—’

  ‘You can tell Sergeant Knollys and me all about it, Constable, while we’re in the cab. A double murder, you say?’

  ‘Yes, sir. A lady and gentleman. Everything’s been left as I found it. Inspector Edwards will be very pleased to see you, Mr Box.’ The constable shook his head, and sighed. ‘As you see when you get there, sir,’ he added, ‘it’s a bad business altogether.’

  5

  Maurice and Sophie

  ‘You’d better tell us the whole story, PC Denny,’ said Box, as their cab turned out of Whitehall into Trafalgar Square. ‘Start with the beginning of your afternoon beat.’

  ‘Well, sir,’ said the constable, ‘I left Little Vine Street police station at half past one. Nothing much happened until about two o’clock, when I found a vagrant dossing down in the basement area of a house in Golden Square, and moved him on. I proceeded down Beak Street and into Carlyle Passage to take the short cut into Lexington Place, and there I found an abandoned hansom cab. I then proceeded—’

  ‘Just a minute, Constable,’ said Box, ‘you’re going too fast for me. Tell me about this abandoned cab.’

  ‘It was an old, battered vehicle, sir, with the horse still between the shafts. It was grazing at the roadside, where there was a narrow strip of grass in front of a row of workshops. An obliging shopkeeper appeared, and offered to drive the cab himself to Callaghan’s Cab Yard in Old Compton Street, and I agreed. They’d be able to recognize it there, and unite it to its driver.’

  ‘What do you think happened to the driver?’

  ‘I expect he got drunk, sir, and fell off the box. It’s happened before.’

  They had left Trafalgar Square, and their cab had joined a steady stream of traffic making its way along Haymarket towards Piccadilly Circus. With luck, they’d be at the scene of the crime in twenty minutes.

  ‘When I turned into Lexington Place, sir,’ said PC Denny, ‘I saw an excited crowd of people clustering around the front steps of Number 12, a respectable three-storey brick house, part of a terrace on one side of the square. A man in the crowd called out to me, saying that someone had been murdered in the house. I accordingly entered the premises, and ascertained that two people lay dead there, evidently by foul means. I sealed the house, and reported to Inspector Edwards, who sent me straight away to fetch you. He’ll be there in the house, now, I expect, with the police surgeon.’

  Number 12, Lexington Place was dark and airless, its small rooms over-furnished. The hallway was papered in a heavy crimson flock, and almost filled by a massive coat stand. A door on the right led into a sitting-room, its walls clothed with the same crimson paper.

  Sitting at a table in the window was a smart, silver-haired man in the uniform of an inspector, busy writing in a notebook. He turned as Box and Knollys entered the room, and rose to greet them.

  ‘Hello, Mr Box,’ he said, ‘I’m glad you could come. I’m certain that this case is something that you’d like to be associated with. Is this your sergeant? I don’t think we’ve met before.’

  ‘Sergeant Knollys,’ said Box, ‘this is Inspector Edwards, of “C”. He and I have worked together on a number of cases in the past. What have you got for me today, Mr Edwards?’

  ‘At first sight, it looked like murder in the pursuit of theft, Mr Box, but I think it’s rather more than that. Do you see those books ranged along the mantelpiece? Well, they’re all in foreign languages – French, mainly, though some of them are in German. And on the flyleaves of most of them you’ll find a foreign name: Sophie Lénart. That, according to the neighbours, is the name of the woman who owned this house.’

  Inspector Edwards motioned towards an open door at the far end of the room.

  ‘She’s in there,’ he said.

  ‘Sergeant Knollys,’ said Box, ‘will you go through those books, page by page? There may be something of interest. Then join Mr Edwards and me in the next room.’

  Box had already become conscious of a smell, sickly, cloying and unpleasant. As yet it was only faint, but his experienced nose told him what it was. It was the odour of incipient decay, and it came from the room beyond the door.

  They entered a kind of study, cluttered, over-ornate, and this time papered in emerald green. Against one wall stood a small writing-table. On the floor near to the table was the dead body of a blonde-haired young woman of thirty or so. She lay on her back, slumped partly against the skirting, and her contorted face still bore an expression of terrified surprise. She looked to Box like something which had been discarded as of no value, crumpled up and flung on to the floor. She wore an expensive black silk evening dress, and around her neck was a black ribbon, adorned with a small cameo brooch. She had been shot at close range through the chest.