‘I couldn’t say, Miss. That’s someone else’s concern.’
The door was thrust open again. The manservant’s ugly countenance leered in. ‘Mistress just called down on the speakin’-tube. Says she’s free now. You can go up.’
Cribb picked up his cap and umbrella. ‘My regards to Albert, Miss. I trust he’ll soon be fit enough to leave this place.’ He gave a slight bow and walked out to his meeting with Mrs Body with the panache of an Elizabethan nobleman going to the block.
‘This way,’ grunted the manservant, shambling ahead. He, in his turn, would made made a most convincing attendant at executions. They crossed the hall and passed through a door marked Private into a narrow carpeted passage. There was a spiral staircase at the end.
‘Up them stairs, copper. ’Er room’s at the top.’ With that, Cribb’s escort backed away and slammed the door shut.
He started up the stairs, gripping his umbrella as if it were a sword and keeping close to the curving wall on his left, where the footing was broadest. This was the interior of a turret-like extremity, just visible from the front of the building in Kensington Palace Gardens. Leaded slit-windows let in some illumination at intervals. The carpeting on the stairs muffled his tread.
More than midway up, he stopped. Rhythmic thuds above his head indicated for sure that someone was descending the stairs. A tread too deliberate for a woman. A man coming down from Mrs Body’s private room? Cribb went down four steps and positioned himself in the shadow against the side, with a clear view of the shaft of light admitted by the window on the facing wall, some eight feet above him. Whoever was coming down would be clearly visible at that point. Presumably he knew that Cribb was on his way up, but he could not know how far he had got. If the sergeant kept his position, he had a momentary advantage. The steps continued to descend, though somewhat irregularly. Cribb watched, like a naturalist trapping a moth in a lantern-beam.
Then the face and figure were there, dressed in spectral white, a pale face with piercing blue eyes. And a crop of grey hair standing up like fresh lavender.
‘Major Chick, by God!’ said Cribb, running up to meet him.
‘Scotland Yard late on the bloody scene, again, I notice,’ mumbled the Major, his breath reeking of gin. He wore a rumpled white duck-suit, with the shreds of a red carnation in his buttonhole. His cravat was untied. So were his shoelaces. ‘You’ve got to think ahead in this blasted job, Sergeant. No damned good messing about checking on poison-books by the hundred.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘’Sintelligence that traps the criminal.’
Cribb held him by the shoulders, deciding whether it was safe to let him descend the rest of the way unaided.
‘What’s this?’ demanded the Major, poking Cribb’s buttonhole with his forefinger. ‘I’d take it off if I were you, Sergeant. Look what happened to mine. She isn’t interested in the blasted holly on top. It’s the plum-pudding she wants.’ With that he pushed Cribb aside and continued confidently down the stairs.
Shaking his head in disapproval, the sergeant watched the Major until he was out of sight. Then he directed his attention upwards. He climbed two steps, paused, frowning, removed the rose from his lapel and put it in his pocket, before tackling the rest of the stairs.
The small hinged door-knocker on the outside of Mrs Body’s suite was cast in brass from a champagne-cork.
‘That sounds suspiciously like the arrival of the detective department,’ called Mrs Body from within. She opened the door. Cribb, two steps below her level, was still a head taller than she. ‘What an agreeable surprise, Mr Cribb! I am delighted that you took my invitation seriously. Welcome to my little snuggery.’
‘Charmed, Ma’am.’
He stepped into a modest-sized circular room lit by gas. Crimson curtains were draped from ceiling to carpet round two-thirds of the walls. To his right, built out from the remaining wall-space, was the box from the Alhambra, a magnificent wood and stucco construction in the baroque style, with gilt-painted muses as side-supports to a canopy of cherubs. Heavy silk drapes in gold were gathered to the sides in lush folds.
‘Takes your breath away,’ said Cribb.
‘Not for long, I hope,’ said Mrs Body. ‘Come and see the interior.’ She led the way behind one of the muses into the box itself. It was furnished with total authenticity: two high-backed chairs with striped satin seats, a small table for drinks, the walls papered in an ornate red and gold design.
Cribb glanced at the lacquered door behind the chairs. ‘Where does that lead to—the foyer?’ he joked.
‘No,’ said Mrs Body. ‘My bedroom. But I should warn you that there is a steep descent.’
‘I shall bear that in mind, Ma’am.’
‘Please sit down, and put your things on the table. I can draw the curtains if you find it cosier. I don’t suppose these curtains were drawn in ten years before I bought them. What can I offer you to drink?’
There were no decanters in sight. Mystified, Cribb asked for gin.
‘White satin?’ said Mrs Body. ‘There is plenty of that here. Butterleigh’s, of course.’
‘Naturally.’
She moved the curtain a fraction and put a speaking-tube to her mouth. ‘Send up two gins, please.’ Turning back to Cribb she asked, ‘Did you meet the Rear-Admiral on your way upstairs?’
Cribb nodded. ‘Ah. So that was who it was.’
‘A personal friend of Sir Douglas. Strange for a nautical man to be affected by drink. Perhaps I should have offered him rum.’ There was the sound of machinery from somewhere. ‘Good. That will be our waiter.’ She got up and opened a small door, impossible to detect in the intricate wall-decoration. Two glasses were waiting on a serving-lift. ‘I am in contact with everyone, you see, but secure from intruders. Would you like to see my other contrivances?’
Cribb hesitated, half-looking at the door behind his chair.
‘You’re not nervous, Mr Cribb?’ She pulled at a cord on her left, and the curtains on the wall facing them parted some six feet, revealing the bare, whitewashed wall. ‘Now, if you will kindly turn down the gas above your head. Thank you. There!’
With the lowering of the light to a modest blue flame, a singular effect appeared on the white wall opposite, a coloured panorama with moving trees and minute figures in motion crossing green lawns.
‘Kensington Gardens to the life!’ said Cribb.
‘A camera obscura,’ explained Mrs Body. ‘The camera is above our heads and looks out from the top of the tower. The image is projected on to the wall by an arrangement of mirrors and lenses. By working a lever I can turn the camera through the full sweep of landscape visible from the tower, including my neighbours’ houses and gardens. Sometimes it can provide diverting entertainment.’
‘That I can believe,’ said Cribb. ‘I was wondering how you passed the time, sitting in a box like this, staring at a blank wall. It’s most ingenious. Scotland Yard could do with some of them, mounted on the higher landmarks of London.’
‘Ah yes. What a pity Mr Body has gone over to the majority. He could have worked miracles for Scotland Yard. He was a man of science, you know. I have a weakness for men with inventive minds. Why, there is a room downstairs still filled with his contraptions and chemicals. I have a magic lantern he made. I show the pictures on the wall here. There are several melodramas in sets of frames, and some whimsical figure-studies which you may care to see later, after more drinks. My gentlemen-friends usually—’
‘You won’t mind my addressing myself to you in a personal way, Ma’am?’ Cribb suddenly said.
‘Not in the least, my dear.’ Mrs Body drew her chair closer to Cribb’s. She was wearing black satin that rustled each time she moved.