Joe stood in the centre of what had been the Dame’s sitting room and his jaw dropped in dismay. There were few pieces of furniture left and those that remained were shrouded in dust sheets. The shelves were bare, the drawers were empty. In the adjoining bedroom, the same scene. ‘What on earth. .? What’s happened here, Dorcas?’
‘They’ve taken her things away. All her things. They’ve been put on the bonfire or in the furnace. Granny’s orders.’
Joe’s shoulders slumped. He was confounded at every turn.
‘Not quite all her things though,’ said Dorcas. ‘Audrey came in here on Sunday night — after you all left. I was putting Aunt Bea’s dress away and I slipped into the wardrobe. She didn’t see me. She seemed to know exactly what she wanted. It was a file. A big one the size of a large ledger. She took it away with her. Just that, nothing else.’
Joe shot out of the room and down the stairs to Audrey’s apartment, Dorcas clattering after him. She watched from the doorway as he looked again at a sterile room, dust-sheeted and cleaned. The only remaining personal possession lay in the middle of the floor with a note on it: ‘To be sent by rail to Miss Blount’s sister’ and the address in Wimbledon followed. Joe didn’t hesitate. He forced open the lock using one of the house-breaking devices he’d brought with him, anticipating just such an emergency, and plunged his hands into the piles of clothes it contained. Nothing interesting came to the surface.
‘You won’t find it in there,’ came an amused voice from the doorway. ‘When we heard that Audrey had been drowned, I came in and took it away. Made it safe.’
Trying to keep his voice level, Joe asked, ‘And where did you put it, Dorcas?’
‘It’s difficult when you haven’t got a room of your own. But I thought of a place. Somewhere no one would ever dream of opening it!’ she said proudly. ‘Come to the kitchen.’
They went along to the family dining room and kitchen in the old part of the house. No stew was cooking today and no one was about.
‘Mel’s been left behind with the others,’ said Dorcas. ‘They’re all over in the orchard.’ She grinned. ‘You call yourself a detective, Joe. . go on — detect!’
Annoyed, he ran an eye over the room, remembering what had been there when he’d first seen it, looking for any changes and not seeing any. What should he do? Shake the child until she told him? Wring her neck? Swallowing his irritation he said, ‘All detectives need a clue. Come on, Dorcas — give me one clue!’
‘You hardly need one as it’s in plain sight but let’s say. . um. . The author of the Georgics would have been very surprised to see these contents!’
‘Virgil? Latin poet? Georgics. . agriculture. . crops. . trees. . and. .’
He walked to the one row of books the room contained. On a shelf high above the dresser lounged, shoulder to shoulder, a rank of dusty tomes, unread for years. He glanced at their titles. The inevitable Mrs Beeton’s Household Management, one or two French ones by grand-sounding chefs, How to Cook for a Family with Only One Maid, The Vegetable Garden and, with a title printed in black ink running down the spine — Beekeeping for Beginners.
‘Beekeeping — the fourth book of the Georgics. Am I getting warm?’
Joe took it down, put it on the table and eagerly opened it up.
He slammed it shut at once.
Blushing, he glanced sideways in confusion at Dorcas.
She was staring back at him, unruffled, amused even. ‘Do you know the story of Zeus and the honey bee?’ As he gargled something unintelligible, she carried on in conversational tone: ‘A queen bee from Mount Hymettus (where the best honey comes from, did you know?) flew up to Mount Olympus and gave some honey fresh from her combs to Zeus. He liked it so much he offered the queen a gift — anything she cared to name. She asked for a weapon with which to guard her honey against men who might try to steal it.
‘Zeus was a bit put out by this because he liked mankind really but he had to keep his promise. So — he gave the queen bee a sting. But it came with a warning: “Use this at the peril of your own life! Once you use the sting, it’ll stay in the wound you make and you’ll die from loss of it.”
‘Joe, do you think that’s what happened to Aunt Beatrice?’
Chapter Twenty-Two
She was talking, he realized, to allow him time to pull himself together and he was grateful for that. ‘Beatrice did something unforgivable,’ he said at last, ‘and it caught up with her, do you mean? Yes, I think it’s entirely possible. Um, I wonder, Dorcas. .’
‘Have a proper look, Joe! I don’t mind. And, yes, I have seen them.’
Tactfully she went to poke the fire and pile on a log or two while he sat down at the table and reopened the file. The contents were meagre. No notes. No printed pages. Secured with paper clips to the plain sheets inside were just five photographs, six inches by five inches, of different girls. He looked at the faces, trying to blank out the context. All young, all beautiful, all naked and in the arms of what appeared to be the same man in each photograph. He had no doubt that the man was Donovan. Five out of the eight members of the Hive? But who were the girls? Studying the similar haircuts and make-up, the kind you could see on any young flapper, he felt he was quivering on the point of recognizing one or two of them. His mind hesitated, stuttered almost, just failing to come up with a familiar name. With a sudden chill, he remembered that Tilly had been about to apply to join this sorry band. And Joanna, if she had answered the signal at the Ritz the other night? Was the intention to recruit her?
He turned the photographs over but found no clues to identity. The setting presented less of a difficulty. The silken divan, one corner of a Modigliani painting carelessly intruding into one of them, were telling enough.
Dorcas pulled up a chair and sat next to him. ‘Now the question is, why? Why did Aunt Bea have these rude pictures? Shall I tell you what I’ve worked out?’
Joe muttered a faint protest but she continued. ‘Was she collecting them? People do, you know. Well, I don’t think that’ll quite answer. Because, you see, they’re not very rude. Not as rude as the ones Jacky’s uncle brought back from Mespot. Anyway — I think they’re rather arty. “Venus and Mars” perhaps? I’ve seen much worse on canvases in France. Look — the focus is on the face. They’re meant to identify the girl. The man’s got his back to the camera. You can’t really identify him for certain. Except!’ She ran to the dresser and from one of the drawers took a magnifying glass. ‘Look — there. He’s got a sticking plaster on his left arm. In all the photos! Now, I don’t suppose these can all have been taken on the same day, do you?’
Joe swallowed and agreed that the logistical drawbacks to mounting such an operation would be insuperable.
‘So they were probably taken over some time, and if they were — it can’t have been a wound, can it? It would have healed. So it’s something he’s hiding from the camera. There’s a man in the village who’s in the Merchant Navy and he’s got a tattoo in the same place. It’s an anchor with hearts and. .’
‘Yes, Dorcas. I’m sure you’re right.’
‘She was blackmailing them, don’t you think?’
‘I’m afraid that’s the most likely explanation.’
‘But why would she bother? She had lots of money.’
‘I think there must have been something else Beatrice wanted from them.’
‘But who are these poor silly girls? They must be so worried, knowing their photographs are somewhere and the person who had them is dead.’