A red silk dressing gown was draped neatly over the back of a chair. With practised gestures, Joe checked the pockets and found them empty. He looked at the label. Parisian. The contents of the wardrobe he next passed in review were equally expensive and well chosen. Well chosen if your life was lived flamboyantly in the public eye-on the stage or the dance floor or travelling between capital cities. With a smile, Joe calculated he would never have been able to afford even one of the cravats, had he had the dubious taste to want one.
‘Turn away,’ Joe shouted to Orlando. ‘I’m about to be indiscreet!’
He began methodically to examine the contents of the chest of drawers by the bed, starting at the top.
‘Well, that’s one question answered,’ he called into the corridor and, when Orlando turned, flourished a small dark blue book with gold lettering. ‘British passport! Our bird is English and he’s really … let me see now … Ah, he’s really Spettisham Gregory Peters not Sergei Petrovsky.’
‘Spettisham? Great heavens! What sort of cad is called after a sneeze? Man must be a lounge lizard. Kinder to think of him as Sergei!’
After a few more moments of stealthy inspection, Joe could not resist attracting Orlando’s attention once more. He flourished a small box at him. ‘Sexually active lizard, you’d have to say. And discreet with it! The very best prophylactic you-know-whats from a Parisian establishment.’
‘Quelquechose pour le weekend, monsieur? Is that what you’re saying?’ Orlando was intrigued enough to take a step into the room to make a closer inspection.
‘Quite. But no discernible evidence of a female presence in this love nest. I wonder …’
‘No! Don’t do what you’re about to do!’ said Orlando firmly. ‘Leave the bed made up just as it is. He’d know if it had been disturbed. And the maids are well trained. All evidence of a delicate nature will have been removed anyway.’
Joe rather thought he spoke from experience and conceded the point. Orlando retreated and Joe started to follow him to the door. Doing everything by the book, he dutifully pulled it closed to check the inner side. Many a time he’d found interesting information in the pockets of a dressing gown hanging neglected on a hook. He was not disappointed. He stared for a moment, taking in the offering. Here on a hook was hanging a dressing gown so aged it reminded him of his father’s moth-eaten old school gown. It even had a hood. Every large house had one such hanging about the place. Visitors who’d forgotten to pack one of their own occasionally shrugged gingerly into them in the middle of the night, preferring to risk possible exposure to skin rash rather than the certainty of the cold of the corridor leading to the bathroom.
Joe glanced back at the glamorous red silk number draped over the chair back and wondered.
The garment was of dark grey wool and so ordinary it might have escaped the attention of someone who had not heard Estelle’s story the previous night. Joe patted it down like a suspect. Feeling a slight lump in the right-hand pocket, he took out his own handkerchief and used it in lieu of an evidence bag to receive the half-smoked cigar he extracted between finger and thumb. His eye, ranging over the fabric of the gown, was caught by a glint of gold low down near the hem and, cursing his lack of tweezers and magnifying glass, he managed with difficulty to pick out a tiny object which joined the cigar in the safety of his handkerchief.
All very fascinating and Joe would have liked to spend much longer studying the garment but Orlando was growing ever more restive.
And it was the incongruous item protruding from the left-hand pocket that seized Joe’s attention. With that before his eyes, demanding his notice, he’d needed all his detective’s discipline to first carry out his routine inspection of the dull gown itself.
It was artistically arranged, you’d have said. A pair of silken white ballet tights dangled seductively, crossed at the ankles, small feet pointing to the floor, clearly caught in the execution of what Joe believed to be called an entrechat.
Chapter Thirteen
Joe reached out and hauled Orlando into the room.
‘Look at this! What do you make of it?’
‘Great heavens! What do you think I make of it! It’s disgusting! The man’s every bit as bad as we gave him credit for. I shall have to speak out.’
‘No, no! Look. Just imagine a girl’s legs in those.’
‘I beg your pardon! What sort of perverted imagination am I to suspect you of, Joe? I had thought-’
‘Clown! Look at them! They’re dancing! The legs are dancing. Didn’t your sister ever do ballet?’
‘Lord, no! You knew Beatrice! Well, you didn’t exactly … Missed her by a few minutes, I think. But you saw her even though she was dead at the time. Six foot tall with big feet! And not a musical bone in her body.’
‘My sister did ballet.’ Joe pulled a face. ‘Made me lift her about the place and count time for her exercises. I know an entrechat when I see one. And here we have one. On its way up or down, who can tell? At any rate it starts and finishes in the same place-the fifth position.’
‘Is that so?’ Orlando peered more closely. ‘Small size. You’d hardly get Dorcas into those.’
‘They’ve been set out like that to attract attention … to make a comment … to cock a snook? But at whom?’
‘We have to say-at us,’ said Orlando heavily. ‘You’re saying we were expected?’
Both men jumped perceptibly to hear a rumbling voice calling in French from the bottom of the stairs.
‘Sergei! Are you up there? Sergei?’
‘And now we’re caught!’ whispered Orlando.
‘Who is this? De Pacy?’ muttered Joe.
‘No. Much worse. Much, much worse! It’s the lord himself.’
Surprising Joe, he straightened his shoulders, grinned and said lightly, ‘Look-leave this to me. I’ll do the talking. You just smile politely. Okay? Stay where you are. Put the door back against the wall and hide the fifth position. Oh, and take those gloves off!’
‘Silmont! Is that you?’ he bellowed back in confident French. ‘We’re up here. Looking for Sergei. The whole world’s looking for Sergei this morning! Will you come up or shall we come down to you? Ah, here you are! Didn’t see you at breakfast, sir-I was hoping to introduce my friend Joe Sandilands, who’s doing the tour. I’ll do it now. Come in, come in.’
With aplomb, Orlando made the introductions. He could have been standing in his own drawing room, Joe thought, confident and welcoming.
The lord was all charm. He was delighted to see Joe whom he had been hoping to catch at lunch and regretted that he would have so short a time with him. ‘Just off to visit an old friend and neighbour for the day,’ he apologized, indicating his riding breeches. ‘Only ten miles distant-I usually ride over. Though I’m so enfeebled these days I never know when one of these rides is going to be my last. You get set in your ways once you reach fifty, you’ll find. It becomes increasingly difficult to give up on anything. I look forward to spending one evening each week playing bridge with three old friends of my youth. This week it happens to be a Tuesday when we’re all free. One of us being a doctor, we tend to follow his lead. Sounds depressing, no doubt, to a young man like you but our weeks turn agreeably around the event. I shall make a point of returning by lunch time tomorrow to do my duty! I feel I ought to exchange nods at least with this inspector of police we’ve been promised. I think cousin Guy allowed himself to be pressed into an overreaction by some of the shrill ladies we have on board at the present. What do you say, Sandilands?’
‘In the same situation, sir, I would myself have called on the police-had I not been the police,’ he finished with a smile. ‘There is always the fear that it may be the prologue to a tragedy.’