Skylark Page 3

  "Would you like a cup of coffee?" I couldn't very well avoid offering. The aroma permeated the room.

  She eyed the French device, which I had bought at Marks and Spencer, as if it were an artifact from outer space. "Oh, dear, no. I must take Rollo walkies." Rollo was her miniature poodle. She had lately had Rollo wormed, but her account of his sufferings was blessedly brief. Five minutes later the coffee was brewed and the landlady gone. Ann and I looked at each other.

  "I beg your pardon," I said. "It was high-handed of me to accept the invitation, but with Jay coming I do not want to offend Miss Beale."

  Ann sighed and took the iron into the kitchen. "Do you think we should tell her about Milos?"

  "When we have to. If we pay next week's rent tonight, she'll be less apt to kick us out when she hears of Milos's, uh, accident."

  Ann's eyes narrowed, and she nodded. "Two weeks' rent if we can con her into taking it."

  The bell rang again. Ann made for the door, and I pressed the plunger on the coffee pot.

  There was a damp flurry as the detectives shed their rain gear in the hallway. Ann took their coats.

  Inspector Thorne entered, rubbing his hands. "Cold. You did say coffee?"

  I indicated the sofa, alias Ann's bed. "I can brew a pot of tea, if you prefer."

  Thorne said coffee was just the ticket, and both men sat on the sofa. Properly speaking, it was a loveseat. A full-width Hide-A-Bed would not have fit in the niche it occupied. I let Ann take the scaled-down armchair and pulled a straight chair from the table, only one leaf of which we extended. Using both leaves would have shoved the table into the arm chair. It was a small flat.

  I poured coffee and creamed and sugared according to instructions. Ann took hers black.

  Inspector Thorne sipped and made an appreciative noise. Wilberforce looked less enthusiastic. Perhaps he preferred tea.

  "Now, ladies, I must take you through your statements again. This is a bad business."

  "Have you heard anything further about Milos's condition?" Ann set her cup on the wide arm of the chair. I hoped she wouldn't knock it off.

  "His heart stopped in the ambulance..." Ann gave a gasp."...but they were able to start it again. He's alive, madam, in a critical state."

  We were all silent for a moment, sipping our coffee.

  Finally, Thorne took a decisive swallow and set his cup on the low coffee table. He turned to Ann. "I don't understand your association with Mr. Vlaçek, Mrs. Veryan. Will you explain?"

  Ann bristled. "I went to a play with him in Lark's company. I don't see what's so mysterious about that. We saw Macbeth at the Barbican. A matinee. We had a bite to eat at the cafeteria there. Then we got on the subway, I mean the Underground, and rode home. That's all there is to the relationship. I like Milos. He's a nice man. But I don't know much about him."

  "I see. How did you meet him?"

  Sgt. Wilberforce had drawn out his notebook and was taking shorthand. I wondered why he didn't just use a tape recorder.

  Ann sat very straight, hands clasped in her lap. "Lark and I attended the booksellers' convention at the Hanover Hotel last week. Milos waited on our table one night. We were having dinner with half a dozen other booksellers. He was a good waiter--animated, bantering with us, not all stiff like the other waiters. They never said anything but 'Yes, moddom.' I thought Milos was witty."

  Thorne kept his face blank and his eyes on Ann. No doubt he was wondering why anyone would want an animated waiter.

  Ann looked at her hands. "Yesterday evening, I ate supper at the Green Lion in Bredon Street. I was alone because Lark was dining with a friend of her mother's. I saw Milos, who was also eating alone, and I spoke to him. He joined me. We had a nice conversation, mostly about the theater. He knows a lot about London theater. He hadn't seen this Macbeth, though, so I asked him if he wanted to meet us at the Barbican today."

  "Do you make a habit of dining with waiters?" The question was offensive and probably meant to be. I stiffened.

  Ann stared at Thorne a moment, mouth pursed, then she leaned back in the chair and laughed. The coffee cup wobbled but didn't fall off.

  When she had composed herself, she said, still chuckling, "Inspector, honey, I was married for nineteen years to a man who always ordered for me. I don't believe I spoke two words to a waiter in all that time. I've been divorced for six months, mind you, but this is the first time I've gone anywhere with an unattached male, waiter or no waiter, since I was a twenty-year-old bride. After Buford Veryan I just wasn't interested." She gave another snort of laughter. "I don't reckon once qualifies as a habit."

  Thorne was smiling a little, too. "Then you don't know of any enemies Mr. Vlaçek may have?"

  "Heavens, no, unless the other waiters are jealous. We left him a very large tip."

  I cleared my throat.

  Thorne glanced at me. "What is it?"

  "I gathered that Milos was a political exile, at odds with the present government of Czechoslovakia. It seems a little unlikely but I suppose, if he has political enemies..."

  Thorne made a face. "Spies?"

  "Just an idea." Putting the thought into words made it sound even more unlikely. Central Europe was thawing, Czechoslovakia more slowly than Poland and Hungary, but the real action was elsewhere--in Iran and China. As far as I knew, Britain had good relations with the Czech Communist regime.

  "There was that man he met outside the theater." Ann's eyes gleamed behind the spectacles as if she liked my scenario. She was sitting up again, though not in the stiff defensive way she had been earlier. "Do you remember his name, Lark?"

  Thorne looked skeptical; Wilberforce, bored.

  I shook my head. "Milos said, 'Your pardon, ladies, there's my friend Something.' I didn't catch the name, but it sounded Czech. At least it didn't sound English. Milos only stepped outside for a few minutes."

  Thorne raised an eyebrow. "Did you see this 'friend' clearly?"

  "No."

  "He was much younger than Milos." Ann shoved her glasses up on the bridge of her nose. "That was my impression of him. Slim, like a young man, and darkish. Shorter than Milos. I think he had a little mustache. They talked for a while then he gave Milos the package and hurried off. It was raining. I remember thinking he needed a decent raincoat--"

  "What package?" Thorne interrupted.

  Ann explained the Harrods bag with great aplomb and brought it out from the hall closet when Thorne asked to see it.

  I opened my mouth to say I thought the writing was Czech, but Thorne would figure that out--Scotland Yard probably had Czech translators. There was no point airing speculations. There was also no point in mentioning that Milos had translated Macbeth in prison. It was possible he wouldn't want the English police to know of his imprisonments. If he lived, he could decide what to tell them. If not, I would add to my statement.

  I cleared my throat again. "I took the folder out of the sack while we were waiting for you to arrive at the station. I looked at the papers, but I couldn't make head or tail of them. I was curious because of the lady whose bag was stolen."

  Both men sat up straight and frowned at me, Wilberforce with his pen poised.

  "On the Underground. The woman who was standing beside Milos when he was stabbed. Someone stole her silver trivet."

  I described the way the tout had prevented the doors from closing while the villain did his work. "The whole thing seemed strange to me. Milos was stabbed, and the same man stole the trivet. I didn't see the stabbing, but it had to be the same man, because no one else except the accomplice got off the car. The trivet was in a Harrods bag like this one, and the woman was about Ann's height and coloring. Afterwards I wondered if the thief might not have mistaken the woman with the bag for Ann, because otherwise his actions don't make sense."

  Thorne pursed his lips in a silent whistle and exchanged glances with Wilberforce. "An odd story. Let's go through the events on the carriage again. You entered the car where?"

  Thorne took me thro
ugh my narrative three times. The third time I remembered the irrelevant umbrella and the Thatcher clone's indignation. "She said that she'd got a good look at the man and meant to report the theft, but she pushed right off the car when it came to a halt at the South Kensington station, and I didn't see her talking to the constable there."

  Thorne looked at his sergeant. "Happen we should check with London Transport."

  Wilberforce nodded and made a note.

  Then Thorne took Ann's version of events. She hadn't seen much because of the press of passengers, and his questions for her were vague, as if he were thinking things through while she talked. She had noticed the tout in the doorway and described him as short, skinny, and mean-looking.

  "Did he look English?"

  Ann stared. "My goodness, Inspector, here y'all are sitting in a city full of people from China and Pakistan and Jamaica, not to mention Spain and Greece. Most all of them speak English. Far as I can tell they are English. He didn't wear a turban, if that's what you mean."

  "Did he look Anglo-Saxon?" Wilberforce interjected. He kept his face blank and his voice neutral, but Thorne gave him a little side-glance. Thorne's ears were red.

  I said, with equal neutrality, "He was Caucasian and probably northern European. I didn't notice anything odd about his body English except that he stared. British people don't do that. His clothes were awful, but not foreign awful."

  I remembered that the tout's hair was parted just left of center and looked greasy. We went through total recall on his loud brown suit and pale tie, and I recalled that the thief's suit had been brown, too, but darker, with pin stripes.

  Thorne let me fill his cup again. Wilberforce passed. So did Ann. Outside the rain blew hard on the windows and a siren yipped in the Old Brompton Road. I was tired to my bones. Thorne took both of us through our descriptions again and rose to go. He had the sergeant copy our passport numbers and vital statistics but didn't take the passports. I had been half afraid he would. We were supposed to report to the Chelsea station the next morning to be fingerprinted and sign our statements.

  I saw the men to the door. Ann looked as if rising from the arm-chair might do her in.

  I was done in, knackered in the local idiom. I collapsed on the couch. It was nearly half past eight by then, and we would soon have to trot upstairs to meet strangers over icky sweet wine. I could think of no way out. In fact, I couldn't think at all. My brain was on hold.

  "Get rid of the photocopies," Ann said out of nowhere.

  I stared at her.

  She ran a distracted hand over her blonde hair. "I don't want them here, Lark. I think they're dangerous."

  "But they're just copies. The police have the originals."

  "I don't care. I want them gone, out of here. Now."

  I groaned and shoved myself to my feet. "It's pouring, and you know there's no garbage can anywhere near. What am I supposed to do with them?"

  "Mail them to your husband."

  I paused at the arch that led out to the hall. "That's not a bad idea. Do we have a mailer? Wait, weren't you going to send a bunch of brochures home to Georgia?"

  She nodded. "I have brown paper and strapping tape. Let me dig it out." She leaned sideways and opened the small chest that served as her dresser. An ugly plastic radio which was tuned permanently to BBC2 lay on top of the chest with a soapstone carving, Inuit work and very nice, beside it. Ann pulled out a drawer and began rummaging in her underwear.

  "The post office is closed." I stepped back into the room. "I'll mail the packet off in the morning."

  "No. Now. We can guess at the postage. You shipped some stuff home last week. How much did that cost?" She pulled out several sheets of brown paper and a tape dispenser.

  "An arm and a leg." I eyed her, but she showed no sign of relenting. "Oh, all right, but I'll send it to Dad, not Jay. Dad will be able to find a translator." My father is a professor of history at a small liberal arts college in upstate New York, and there are several universities nearby, some with extensive language programs. I needed to know what the papers contained. Milos would not be up to explanations for a while, and I didn't think the police would satisfy my curiosity.

  I scrawled a brief explanatory note to Dad. Ann made up the parcel in short order and dug out all of her stamps. I wrote my parents' address in and slapped on a couple of Par Avion stickers I found in my wallet. For good measure I added three one pound stamps and two 50p ones. Overseas postage was expensive, as I recalled only too well from the previous week. The parcel looked absurd with all those portraits of the queen in different colors plastered over the right hand corner. A philatelist's nightmare.

  What if the papers were dangerous? That thought stung my paranoia to life again. Perhaps the KGB would be watching Dad's mail for a parcel from his darling daughter. If so, I couldn't very well use the address of the flat as sender. I didn't want to set my father up.

  I brooded over the package.

  "Hurry. You'll have to post it before we go upstairs."

  "I'll have to? I thought this was your idea." I scribbled B.D. Lee, Dept. of History, University of London, WC1 in the upper-left corner. That probably wasn't the proper postal code and the name was an old joke, but Dad was always receiving mail from colleagues abroad. If we had insufficient postage, some University of London history office was in for a surprise.

  My maiden name is Dailey. When I was twelve, I started writing a space opera with myself as the thinly disguised heroine. I never got beyond chapter one, but my family thought it was a great joke and kept making up pen names for me. Flash Bunsen--Ma's offering--and Arthur C. Clockwork--from my brother Tod, who was reading Anthony Burgess at the time. Dad's contribution was Birdie Day Lee, the Birdie because of my first name. He still calls me Bird sometimes. He would know at once if the package arrived.

  I threw on my raincoat, filthy as it was, and dashed around the corner and down the long block to the post office. I shoved the parcel through the appropriate slot and dashed back. It was five after nine.

  Ann met me at the door. I pushed past her. "We're late," she protested.

  "I need to comb my hair. It's wet." I dropped the raincoat on the bedroom floor and went into the bathroom to make adjustments. "I didn't see any villains lurking in the street."

  Chapter 4.

  It was twenty past nine before I pushed the button marked 'Beale.' A buzzer sounded, and I tugged the heavy door open. When we entered the foyer, a forty watt light came on, disclosing a brown door with a 1 on it and a stairway covered with what looked like poorhouse linoleum. It, too, was brown. The walls may once have been white--or cream or ecru. Now they looked foxed, like the pages of old, old books, and gave off something of the same musty odor. A brown rubber strip about three inches wide edged each step. Half the strips had begun to work loose and several were missing. At the first half-landing sat a metal pail. The handle of a mop rose from it and sagged against the wall.

  Ann pointed at the stairs. "Do we have to scale that?"

  "That's it. Four flights."

  She groaned. Perhaps she had expected a lift.

  "Take a deep breath and hold onto the bannister," I exhorted in my kindest basketball coach mode. I'd forgotten Ann hadn't yet seen the Dickensian hallway.

  I had arrived in London two days before she had. I had scrambled up the stairs, passed Miss Beale's muster, been shown the flat, and paid the first week's rent. Out of pure charity, I met Ann's plane and gave her her key. Though Miss Beale had visited us twice before that evening in our basement snuggery, we had not yet had occasion to pay her a call.

  The light went out.

  Ann squeaked.

  I began to feel real guilt. "It's okay. The light's on a timer. Stand right there." I groped for the rail, and slithered past the mop and up another half flight to the first landing. I stumbled once on a loose strip of rubber but regained my balance. When I reached the landing I brushed my arm along the wall until I found the light button and pressed it.

 
; Another forty watt bulb lit, and I peered at Ann's shadowy face. She gaped up at me, eyeglasses glinting in the dim light.

  "Come on. This bulb will go off, too, if you don't step up the pace."

  She grasped the bannister and charged up the stairs. By the third landing she was panting. She leaned on the newell, which creaked but held.

  I waited.

  When she had caught her breath, she murmured in a drawl as thick as samp, "Leave me here, Lark, honey. I'll just sit on this nice stair step, and watch that little old light bulb flickering off and on, and think about things? If you're feeling kindly you can bring me down a bottle of sherry. I'm sure the rats and I will get along fine."

  I bit back a grin. "Courage, mon ami. Let me haul the purse for you." Her handbag must have weighed twenty pounds.

  She shoved herself upright just as the light went off again. I punched it on and led the way, more slowly this time, but not as slowly as Ann. I had knocked and the door had opened well before she reached the landing, so I was standing there all by myself, lit by yet another forty watt bulb, when I first saw Trevor Worth.

  He said his own name, adding, "Hullo, hullo, what have we here? When Auntie said American ladies I envisaged a pair of old tabbies. I am pleasantly surprised."

  He was a tall, blue-eyed man, greyhound lean, with a voice like Michael Caine and a suit that murmured Saville Row, my dears. I think he was wearing an Old School Tie, which old school I couldn't tell. The poodle, Rollo, gave a half-hearted yelp and snuffled at Worth's heels. Both of us ignored the dog.

  Despite the forty watt bulb, Worth was backlit so that his smooth hair glowed like a halo. It was that shade of reddish gold no hair-dye has ever duplicated. His complexion was as pale as Devonshire cream. He beamed at me and held out his hand.

  I almost dropped Ann's tote in my haste to make contact with this strictly British god. "I'm Lark Dodge. You must be Miss Beale's nephew." I was conscious of the run in my panty hose and the fatuity of my comment.