Skylark Page 6

  When we entered the flat it was obvious that the cleaning woman had come and gone. Everything looked as if it had been spit-shined. A neat stack of pounds sterling lay on the dining table along with a note in Miss Beale's elegant script.

  Miss Beale was very sorry, but we would have to vacate her flat Monday morning. She had had a visit from Inspector Thorne regarding an Unfortunate Incident on the Underground. She was willing to forgive the burglary, but she had strong reservations about persons who associated themselves with Middle European waiters, especially the sort who got stabbed in public. She was refunding ?25 in lieu of notice. Would we leave our keys in an envelope in the mailbox by noon Monday? No further personal contact was called for. She was ours faithfully, Letitia Beale.

  "Faithfully, my foot," I fumed, when I had deciphered the message. "Where's the receipt she gave us?"

  "I left it on the chest." Ann waved a vague hand.

  "It's not there, but I suppose it will show up. The maid probably tidied it away." Gloom settled over me, dulling my anger. Getting Miss Beale to take the rent had been a forlorn hope.

  Ann was counting the bills. "'Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive.'"

  "That's not very helpful."

  "No, honey, but it's comforting." Her voice sharpened. "I'd be willing to bet Miss Beale took the receipt. I left it right by the radio, in plain sight. Whatever are we going to do?"

  I flung myself on her couch-bed. "Start hunting for a cheap hotel."

  "We could go to Hay-on-Wye."

  "What?"

  "That town in Wales that's nothing but used bookshops."

  I looked at my roommate with fresh respect. Ann was at least ten years older than I, and she had been through an ordeal that had left me reeling, physically and emotionally. Since she knew Milos better than I did, she was probably even more shaken by the stabbing. Yet here she was improvising a course of action, suggesting that we abscond, debunk, scarper.

  It was an excellent idea.

  "Why not?" I stood up. There were road maps in the bedroom. "Who needs a London flophouse? Jay and I can camp at the airport, if necessary. Let's do it."

  "We'll have to tell Inspector Thorne where we're going."

  "And why," I said with relish. "Maybe there's a law against instant eviction."

  Chapter 6.

  "She evicted you, didn't she?"

  I glanced up from my newspaper to find Daphne Worth beside my sidewalk table, steely gray eyes glinting. She wore an unflattering brown suit and sensible shoes, and looked as if she were on her way to work, though it was only eight.

  "Were you speaking to me?"

  The French ladies at the next table paused in their domestic chatter to watch us. Daphne flushed scarlet but held her ground. "Did she?"

  I lowered the Independent and took a sip of M. Roche's excellent coffee. "We have until Monday to leave. Did you hunt me down here to gloat?"

  She perched on the spare chair. "I saw you, so I decided to ask. Why didn't you tell Auntie Wednesday evening about the stabbing?"

  "Miss Beale is a thoroughly conventional woman, the sort who imagines a rape victim must be asking for it."

  She compressed her lips but didn't contradict me.

  "I thought she would toss us out on our ears the minute she heard we were involved in a police investigation, however innocently. There was a chance she wouldn't find out. We took the chance and lost."

  "You should have told her at once."

  I swallowed cooling coffee. "But we didn't. She found out. That's that. Go gloat somewhere else. I want to read the paper."

  "If you'd been open with her--" She broke off, which was a good thing, because I might otherwise have committed a breach of the peace.

  I raised the paper to shut her out.

  She muttered something.

  "I didn't hear you."

  "I said there's a tenants' rights group."

  I laid the paper down and gaped at her.

  "You could register a complaint."

  I felt the ground shifting under my assumptions. "You're suggesting I lay a complaint against your aunt? Why?"

  "She's not being fair."

  A silence followed in which I tried to rearrange my perceptions. Daphne fumbled in her purse and came up with a pen and a small slip of paper. She scribbled something on it.

  "There. That's the telephone number. They probably can't do anything for you. Flats let on a short lease are a legal anomaly, but they'll want to know. The president, Marge Perry, is a friend of mine,"

  "Uh, thanks."

  She rose, said goodbye, and left as abruptly as she'd come, heading in the direction of her school. I stared after her. I had thought her completely subservient to her aunt, a real zero, but she hadn't even asked me not to tell Miss Beale what she'd suggested.

  I was still puzzling over Daphne Worth's motives when I got back to the flat. Splashing noises indicated Ann was taking a bath. I had already bathed and put on a respectable hospital-and-cop-visiting dress before I went out for coffee, so we left for the Chelsea police station as soon as Ann emerged. She was rosy and cheerful and, when I told her, just as surprised by Daphne's suggestion as I had been.

  The day was blustery but clear, and we seemed to be walking in the opposite direction from everyone else.

  I stepped onto a zebra. "It was generous of Daphne to seek me out."

  Ann swung along beside me. When we gained the sidewalk, the Fulham Road traffic closed across our path. "Either she's generous or she wants to cause trouble for Miss Beale."

  "Good heavens."

  "Daphne may resent her aunt's preference for Trevor. It was as plain as the nose on your face that Daphne is not Miss Beale's favorite."

  I hadn't thought Miss Beale's preference was all that obvious, and I said so.

  Ann shifted the heavy purse to her other shoulder. "She hung on Trevor's every word. Didn't you see the way she watched him? Our old spaniel used to watch Buford that way. Daphne must've noticed."

  I digested the idea. "Do you want to call the rights group?"

  "No. I don't like being manipulated."

  I dodged a pram. "I thought Daphne was sincere."

  "Even so, what would be the point? We aren't going to sue. I don't want to waste any more time."

  Now that we knew where it was, it took us only ten minutes to walk to the station. We were shown directly to Inspector Thorne's office. He seemed surprised to see us and not best pleased that we were thinking of leaving London.

  I explained Miss Beale's reaction to his visit. Though I took some pains not to lay blame where it was due, he looked distressed.

  "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear." He rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  "My reaction exactly. My husband is flying in next Friday, and we had planned to stay on in the flat for another week after that."

  "We have a list of hotels and bed-and-breakfast houses in the area. Shall I ask the desk sergeant to call round for you?"

  I could imagine the welcome we would receive if the police arranged housing for us.

  Ann beamed at him. "That's sweet of you, Inspector. Why don't we see what we can find on our own, though? We don't want to be pests."

  He smiled back, almost as if he were flirting with her. "It's no trouble, Mrs. Veryan."

  I mentioned the name of Daphne's tenant group just to see his reaction.

  "Daphne Worth," he repeated, eyebrows working. "Oh yes. She was quite the activist, always organizing protests until she moved to Chiswick last year. I didn't make the connection yesterday. You could take your case to the association, Mrs. Dodge, but I'm bound to tell you they can't do you much good. They're opposed to letting out flats on short leases, so they won't have much sympathy for you, either, and they'll go to the tabloids for support."

  Ann blanched. Nor did the idea appeal to me.

  Thorne went on, "Are you bent on making a point?"

  "I'll write a letter of protest to the agency that gave us her address
," I said. Time to change the subject. "Have you found the woman whose trivet was stolen?"

  "Not yet. We've put a notice in the evening papers, however, and a made a short appeal on the telly. Do you think she could identify the assailant?"

  "She said she could." I didn't place much reliance on the Thatcher clone's sense of public duty. However, she had been indignant over the trivet. I wished I had seen more than the man's shoulder and the back of his head. I was pretty sure I could identify the accomplice who had held the door, though, and I told Thorne that.

  He sighed. "Your description fits half the old lags in the metropolitan area. Happen we'll be able to narrow the field with our computers. I wish you weren't leaving town."

  Ann said, "We'll be back Thursday, Mr. Thorne. I have only four and a half weeks left before my return flight."

  "And you'd like to see more of England than the Chelsea police station." He gave her another semi-flirtatious smile.

  I began to feel like a duenna.

  "Will you let me know of your arrangements as soon as you can?" He was flirting.

  "We have to visit Milos before we do that," Ann murmured. Her eyelashes fluttered behind the pink lenses. "We could telephone you from the Tourist Information Office."

  "Leave a message, if you please, Mrs. Veryan." He turned back to me, and the cordiality evaporated. "I've had a call from Leicestershire, from Chief Inspector Harry Belknap."

  "Ah, Jay must have got through. My husband, I mean." I mentioned that Jay and Harry Belknap shared an interest in DNA fingerprinting. Thorne managed to look both skeptical and faintly alarmed. Few police officers like interference from outsiders, and technophobia afflicts them as often it does as the general public. I refrained from detailed explanations, and we took our leave. All the same it was interesting to know that Belknap had taken our plight seriously.

  A double-decker bus shuttled us along the Fulham Road to the vicinity of St. Botolph's Hospital.

  The receptionist greeted us with startling warmth. We had been touched by Fame in the guise of the Daily Mail. She had read the account of Milos's stabbing and decided we must be the unnamed American women who had witnessed the event. She wanted to know all about it.

  We wanted to know all about Milos's condition. It was a standoff.

  She called the head nurse on Milos's floor. "Matron says he can't receive more than one visitor at a time, love. And for no more than ten minutes. He's very ill."

  Ann and I looked at each other.

  "You go," I said. "Give him my best and ask him what he wants my father to do with the papers." Ann went off, and I submitted, in a spirit of pure altruism, to the receptionist's curiosity. I didn't tell her much beyond what she had read in the paper. I did describe the trick the assailant and his accomplice had used to get away, and I gave her a little color about my earlier sensations when the train stopped in the tunnel.

  "Oh, I know, dear. Isn't it dreadful?" Between answering the telephone and dealing with a trickle of other visitors, all of whom eavesdropped in passing, she retailed half a dozen anecdotes of Terror on the Tube.

  I think Mrs. Philbrick, that was her name, almost forgot about the assault, so eager was she to confide to a sympathetic listener the hard lot of a daily commuter from the southern suburbs.

  "It's a pity you can't find a place to live in that's closer to your work."

  "I've asked to be transferred half a dozen times," she mourned. "Me mum has to watch the boys till I come home, and that's half eight some nights. What we need is rent controls and more council housing close in."

  "Won't happen with this lot in office," an elderly visitor grumbled. "Not a hope. Out to destroy the working class, they are."

  A lively three-way discussion followed when the young typist, who was also stationed behind the counter, pitched in with the rumor of a three bedroom flat in Kensington that had sold for two million pounds. All of them exclaimed over that, the man turning rather red.

  "Sinful I call it." Mrs. Philbrick shook her head. Her stiff curls bobbed. "Where will it all end? London Transport are going out on strike, too." The union had just announced a series of work stoppages on selected weekdays. "I'll have to ride Tony's bike to work, won't I? Or rollerskate. I don't know what we're coming to."

  Assenting murmurs. The term poll tax surfaced. I began to lose the thread of argument. Something about the Duke of Westminster, who owned most of Mayfair, paying lower rates than a Pakistani family of twelve crammed into two rooms. That sounded like tabloid fantasy to me. My thoughts drifted back to Milos. What was keeping Ann? Her ten minutes were up.

  Three visitors with complicated requests came to the desk at that point, and I made my escape to a vinyl-covered couch that overlooked the street. Between bits of office procedure, I caught further snatches of the poll tax controversy.

  I thumbed through a brochure on lung disorders and a dispirited copy of Country Life with ads for manor houses in Berks, castles in the Inner Hebrides, and posh modern establishments on the Thames within minutes of the main line. All, of course, with price tags in the millions. Architectural porn.

  I wondered what it would be like to live in the Inner Hebrides. I wondered what our soon-to-be-vacated flat would bring on the open market. With and without burglars.

  "Lark?" Ann had materialized beside me.

  I jumped up. "How is he?"

  She shook her head. "Not looking good and doped to the eyebrows. Let's go have coffee somewhere. The disinfectant they use in those wards smells like a public washroom."

  We headed for the door. The receptionist called a farewell after us, and I waved. Outside, the street swarmed with shoppers. We found a cafe near the Earl's Court Tube Station.

  We sat at an outside table amid EC émigrés drinking real coffee and English shop clerks having their elevenses. Ann inhaled the coffee aroma. "Ah, that's better." She took a sip. "Milos didn't recognize me at first. He kept mumbling in Czech."

  "You said he was doped up."

  "I talked to the head nurse, matron, I mean. She disapproved of me, but she did tell me he was on pain medication and something to keep him from moving around and ripping out the sutures. The combination must be potent."

  "Did you ask Milos about the papers?" I nibbled my croissant.

  Ann sipped, frowning. "Yes. Several times. At first he just seemed confused. I kept repeating that you had sent a photocopy to your father who was a college professor. The last time I asked what he wanted us to do about the papers, he said something that sounded like 'publish' or maybe 'punish.'"

  Publish? So the papers were his translation of Macbeth after all. I felt a twinge of unreasonable disappointment. "You're sure he didn't want the document shredded?"

  "Honey, he mumbled a whole lot of stuff in Czech. I picked out an English word here and there. 'Lock,' for instance. I couldn't tell whether he meant lock as in lock of hair or loch as in Loch Ness. Maybe he was saying 'locket' or even a Czech homonym."

  "Maybe he was telling you to lock up the papers." I crumbled the croissant.

  Ann took a reflective sip. "Possibly. He did repeat 'lock,' but he didn't say 'shred' at all, or, for that matter, 'translate,' and his pronunciation was blurred. I'm pretty sure he said 'publish,' not 'punish,' but the matron was shooing me out by then."

  I sighed. "We'll just have to ask him again tomorrow, and hope he's more coherent. What now?"

  "I thought you had an appointment with the map dealer."

  "God, you're right." I looked at my watch. "I have to be in Knightsbridge in half an hour."

  "That shop near Harrods?"

  I rose. "Yes. Do I have to change at South Kensington?"

  Ann stood, too. She took out her wallet-sized map of the Underground and squinted at it. "Knightsbridge is on the Piccadilly Line. Do you want me to come with you?"

  "You don't have to." But I gulped. Mrs. Philbrick's horror stories were fresh in my mind. "Uh, one of us will have go to the main tourist office today. If you're serious about Hay-on-Wy
e."

  "I'll do it. They have a reservation service, don't they?" She took my arm and stopped me, looking up at my face. Behind the pink lenses, her eyes looked worried and kind. "Are you sure you'll be okay alone on the Tube?"

  I forced a smile. "I may freak out, Ann, but it's a short ride, and I ought to deal with this little aversion now, before it gets worse. If I start hyperventilating I'll get off at South Ken and walk to Knightsbridge."

  She gave my arm a light pat. "That's a good idea. I'll see you at the flat. Want me to cook supper?"

  "Dinner."

  "Whatever." She was smiling. We had a north-south split on meal terminology. "I'll fix us some down home food."

  "You won't find hush puppies at that market near the flat."

  "I was thinking of a tofu stir-fry, honey. Isn't that California comfort food?"

  In Knightsbridge, I ordered two eighteenth century charts of the California coast. I got home before Ann did and took a nap that probably would have lasted eight hours if she hadn't shaken me awake at five. My internal clock was thoroughly confused.

  She broiled lamb chops--English lamb has to be the best in the world--and served them with a side dish of fresh pasta and an honest, American-style green salad.

  I ate every morsel she set before me and felt much better. "My compliments to the chef."

  Ann grinned. "I couldn't find tofu."

  While I did the dishes, she reported her adventures at the tourist office. We debated whether to hire a car at Heathrow and drive west or take Britrail to Cardiff and pick up a car there. She had collected a sheaf of brochures. Escape from London began to seem possible, and my spirits rose. Ann was downright exuberant.

  She consulted her watch and beamed at me. "Ready for the play?"

  "Oh God. Hamlet. Do we have to?"

  "Absolutely. It'll be a high-point of the trip."

  "And there have been so many low points." I made a face. "Okay. Let's take the Underground. I think I'm over my funk."

  "We can buy something sweet and sinful for dessert during the interval."