Joe paused and watched the bluff features puff up in outrage. Joe congratulated himself on having guessed one of the man’s secrets.
“Your mother might have approved too. I’m sure we need look no further for the inspiration for all that witchery about the beetle and the unkind cuts. A Shakespearean actress, I understand? Friend of Ellen Terry? You were raised in a lively theatrical household until your militaristic father sent you off to be schooled.”
Another glower dismissed this effort at understanding.
“But your burial party didn’t go unobserved. Your men—Onslow and Cummings, would that be?—caught a destitute seaman watching their activities. He had a name too. Absalom Hope. Absalom it was who took the trouble to get close to your Maybach and make a note of its registration number. Did you have to break his neck?”
“A destitute man? One of the thousands littering the streets and the riverbanks. He probably died in a fight. They’re always at it. Feeble-minded perhaps? Still collecting numbers of cars that take his interest. He could have recorded the Maybach on one of its many trips through the West End. Matron will confirm she drove a patient home along the Chelsea Reach a fortnight ago. The men probably misunderstood their instructions regarding conveyance of the body to the undertaker’s. I’ll have enquiries made. Look, I’m getting pretty fed up with doing your work for you.”
He looked at his watch.
“I’m sure Matron will back you to the hilt. But even Matron cannot rearrange the fingerprints we have taken from the coin found in Marie’s mouth.”
“As you say—there are many such in London. Not all declared as they were not legitimately acquired. You know this! You know also that my prints were bound to be found on it as I handled it on the morning of the discovery. I put it into my handkerchief for safe keeping. Everyone is aware of the dangers of contamination.”
“But not all are aware of the stickiness and tenacity of the secretions from the human finger when it comes into contact with a flat metal surface. We discussed that, if you remember, at the time.”
Joe took a large brown envelope and extracted the sheets from it. “The results from our forensic evidence laboratory. Wonderful work! Are you familiar with the terms ‘whorl,’ and ‘loop’ and ‘arch?’ No? In order to ascribe a print to its owner we must establish in a scientifically acceptable way that it could belong to none other. We require a high number of matching whorls and arches and bifurcations before we allow ourselves to announce an identification and present the evidence in court. Though, I have to say, once such scientific demonstration of guilt is put before them, juries always seize on it as utterly reliable. As it is.”
Joe selected a sheet and pointed at it with his pencil.
“Now, this is where the lab has something fascinating to say. Two people, as you point out, handled the coin after discovery. Professor Stone has left some beauties. Here and here, for example. Your prints are less easy to identify as you carefully took and held the coin by its rim. So truncated are they that we wouldn’t use them in evidence even if we needed to, which—and again, I’ll allow—we don’t. So far, so dull. But according to Sam and Joel and everyone else present on the riverbank, the professor it was who extracted it”—Joe waited for the slight nod—“and you after that. It follows that, had you, by chance, put your fingers anywhere on the surface, your prints would have obscured—overlaid—the professor’s.”
Another nod.
“So, tell me why, Colonel, our scientists found two clear examples of your prints under-lying the professor’s? Here and here. Partials, because the professor’s dabs almost obliterate them, but you can make it out if you look carefully. I must ask for enlargements to present to the jury. Do you see—the lab has marked up two corresponding arches, a whorl, a bifurcation …”
There was no response as Joe waited for his thin ice to crack.
“Only one explanation, really. You had your hands on this coin before the dowsing brought it back to the light. Because you are the owner or you are the man who inserted it into the dead girl’s mouth. Probably one and the same.”
This was the pivot of his argument. If his reasoning was rejected, he could take it no further.
“Bravo! What a performance!”
“Don’t applaud yet—I haven’t finished. I was puzzled, Swinton, but I got there in the end, as to how you’d got hold of my telephone number. Alerted by Julia that I’d made off into the blue with Kingstone, Natalia consulted you. You got my Chelsea number from Hermione on some pretext or other. She wouldn’t have objected to telling you in the interests of furthering the case. Matron was it? The lady who pretended to be my secretary on the telephone? You sent Natalia to her death, you know. I don’t suppose you’ve ever—since the war—fired a shot at a man in anger, let alone broken a neck with your own hands but, in my book, you’re the guilty party.”
Wearily, Swinton looked at his watch. “How long does it take to brew tea in the Yard?” He sighed. “At last a mistake. Wrong, Sandilands, in the detail. Not that it matters. I was given your number by Natalia who had it from Julia herself. She got it from Kingstone’s bodyguard. Armiger? I’m quite certain that the Yard will sign Natalia’s death off as a suicide. Temperamental, these dancers. Crossed in love? Victim of blackmail? So many hazards encountered in a life led in the spotlight. Much less paperwork involved with a case of suicide. We can help you with that. If you’d like a useful second medical opinion, we have some excellent professionals on our books. So what have you got to charge me with? A burial? For sending an unknown girl off in some style? Generosity of spirit? Paganism perhaps? You’ll get laughed out of court, man. Thank goodness you’ve told me all this in confidence. There’s still time to save you from humiliation.”
Swinton tilted his large head and looked at Joe steadily for a few moments. “They tell me you’re a patriot,” he said, surprisingly.
“As much as the next man or woman,” Joe said, killing off the comment.
“A Scotsman, I understand? Ah! The Scots! Backbone of the Empire!”
“Would you say backbone? Many would say—head. My father is Scottish, my mother English. Can it possibly signify?”
“A British patriot, then?”
Joe was puzzled and annoyed by his insistence on the use of the outmoded word and he replied briskly. “Actions, to me, speak louder than words. I will simply say: I fought in the war for four years and I have spent the remainder working to uphold British law and order. The world, if it needs to, may draw its own inferences. My emotions and morals can be of no interest to you.”
Swinton was unabashed by Joe’s pomposity. Probably a style he admired and he was still intent on pursuing his point. “I should like to have your reaction to a story … piece of history, more like … Perhaps you know it?”
He sat forward in his chair, elbows on knees, a kindly uncle entertaining his nephews on a wet Saturday afternoon.
“The Second Opium War with China was a bloody business. One of my ancestors was a naval officer aboard a gunboat—the Plover—along with several others trying to get access to the mouth of the Hai River. In eighteen fifty-nine, Great Uncle Gerald’s fleet came under severe fire from the Chinese troops manning a shore fort and those of our boats that weren’t sunk were stranded, disabled, in a narrow channel. Turkey shoot! They were being pounded to bits. There sailed onto the scene an American steamer. Not much use to our Admiral since the United States had signed a treaty of neutrality with China. All the Toey-Wan was allowed to do was watch from a distance. But that’s not what happened, Sandilands. In sailed Commodore Josiah Tattnall of the US Pacific Squadron, guns blazing. With reckless bravery, he put himself between the Chinese guns and the British ships and towed our sailors to safety.