He said with a tilt of his chin in the direction of the sitting room, “So who were they? That man and woman.”
He could tell by her face that she believed she had prevailed. She said, “He once worked for Scotland Yard. She’s…I don’t know. She assists him in some way.”
“You’re confident they can handle this?”
“Yes. I am.”
“Why?”
“Because when he asked me to make a schedule of Charlotte’s activities, he had me do it twice. Once in writing. Once in printing.”
“I don’t get it.”
“He has both kidnapping notes, Alex. The one I received. The one Dennis received. He wants to look at my writing. He wants to compare it to the writing in the notes. He thinks I may be involved. He doesn’t trust anyone. Which means, I believe, that we can trust him.”
4
“AROUND FIVE PAST FIVE,” Damien Chambers said. He spoke with the unmistakable broad vowels of the Belfast native. “She sometimes stays longer. She knows I don’t give another lesson till seven, so she sometimes hangs about for a while. She likes me to play the whistle for her while she plays the spoons. But today she wanted to be off at once. So she was. Round five past five.” With three long fingers he shoved wispy filaments of his apricot hair back into the long ponytail that he’d banded into place at the base of his neck. He waited for St. James’s next question.
They’d got Charlotte’s music teacher out of bed, but he hadn’t complained at the intrusion. He’d merely said, “Missing? Lottie Bowen’s gone missing? Hell!” and excused himself for a moment to dash up the stairs. Water began to roar energetically into a bathtub. A door opened then closed. A minute passed. The door opened and closed again. The water shut off. He’d clattered back to join them. He wore a long dressing gown of red plaid and nothing beneath it. His ankles were exposed. These, like the rest of him, were as white as bleached bones. He had tattered leather slippers on his feet.
Damien Chambers lived in one of the mole-sized houses of Cross Keys Close, a rabbit warren of cobbled passageways with antique streetlamps and a dubious atmosphere that encouraged looking over one’s shoulder and hurrying along. St. James and Helen hadn’t been able to drive into the area—the MG wouldn’t fit, and even if it had done, there would have been no way to turn it around—so they’d left it in Bulstrode Place, just off the high street, and they’d worked their way through the maze of passages to find Number 12, where Charlotte Bowen’s music teacher lived.
They now sat with him in his sitting room, which was not much larger than a compartment on an old-fashioned railway carriage. A spinet piano shared the limited floor space with an electric keyboard, a cello, two violins, a harp, a trombone, a mandolin, a dulcimer, two lopsided music stands, and a half dozen dustballs the approximate size of sewer rats. St. James and Helen used the piano bench for their sitting. Damien Chambers perched on the edge of a metal chair. He tucked his hands deeply into his armpits, a posture that made him look more diminutive than his five feet and five inches.
“She wanted to learn the tuba,” he said. “She liked its shape. She said tubas look like gold elephant ears. Of course, they would have been brass, not gold, but Lottie isn’t much of a one for details. I could have taught her the tuba—I can teach almost anything—but her mother wouldn’t have it. She said violin at first, which we tried for six weeks, till Lottie drove her parents round the bend with the screeching. She said piano after that, but she didn’t have space in the house for a piano and Lottie refused to practise on the piano at her school. So we’ve moved to the flute. Small, portable, and without much noise. We’ve been going at it for nearly a year now. She’s not much good because she won’t practise. And her best mate—a little girl called Breta—hates to listen and always wants her to play. Play with her, I mean. Not play the flute.”
St. James reached into his jacket pocket for the list Eve Bowen had assembled for him. He ran his gaze down it. “Breta,” he said. The name wasn’t listed. Nor, he noted with some surprise, was any name other than those adults Charlotte met with who were listed by profession: dancing teacher, psychotherapist, choir director, music teacher. He frowned at this.
“That’s right. Breta. I don’t know her surname. But she’s quite the rapscallion, according to Lottie, so she shouldn’t be hard to track down if you want to talk to her. She and Lottie are always up to one trick or another. Pinching sweets together. Giving pensioners a hard time. Sneaking into the betting shop where they oughtn’t be. Slipping into the cinema without a ticket. You don’t know about Breta? Ms. Bowen didn’t tell you?”
His hands burrowed farther into his armpits. His shoulders caved in as a result. Damien Chambers must have been at least thirty years old, but in that position, he looked more like one of Charlotte’s contemporaries than a man who was technically old enough to be her father.
“What was she wearing when she left you this afternoon?” St. James asked.
“Wearing? Her clothes. What else would she have been wearing? She took nothing off here. Not so much as her cardigan. I mean, why would she?”
St. James felt Helen’s uneasy glance upon him. He showed Chambers the photograph that Eve Bowen had given them. The music teacher said, “Yes. This is what she always wore. It’s her school uniform. Ugly colour, that green, isn’t it? Looks like mould. She didn’t much like it. Her hair’s shorter now than in this picture though. She’d just got it cut last Saturday. Sort of an early Beatles cut, if you know what I mean, that Dutch-boy thing? She was grousing about it this afternoon. She said it made her look like a boy. She said she wanted to wear lipstick and earrings now that her hair was chopped off, so people would know she was a girl. She said Cito—that’s what she called her stepfather, but I expect you know that already, don’t you? It’s from Papacito. She’s studying Spanish. She said Cito told her that lipstick and earrings were no longer prime indicators of the wearer’s sexuality, but I don’t think she really knew what he meant. She pinched one of her mother’s lipsticks last week. She was wearing it when she came for her lesson. Looked like a little clown because she hadn’t a mirror with her when she smeared it on, so it was a bit crooked. I had her go upstairs to the loo and look in the mirror to see what a mess she’d made of herself.” He coughed into his fist, returned the fist to his armpit, and began to tap his foot. “That was the only time she was upstairs, of course.”
As Helen tensed on the piano bench next to him, St. James observed the music teacher and considered the potential sources of his agitation—including whatever or whoever had taken him on his rush up the stairs when they’d first arrived. He said, “Did this other child—Breta—ever come with Charlotte to her lesson?”
“Nearly always.”
“Today?”
“Yes. At least Lottie said that Breta was with her.”
“You didn’t see her yourself?”
“I won’t allow her inside. Too much of a distraction. I make her wait at the Prince Albert pub. She hangs about those tables outside on the pavement. You probably saw them yourselves. In Bulstrode Place, on the corner.”
“That’s where she was today?”
“Lottie said she was waiting, which is why she wanted to be off so quick. And that’s the only place to wait.” He looked thoughtful and pulled his lip inward with his teeth. “You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if Breta’s behind this in some way. I mean behind Lottie’s running off. Because she has run off, hasn’t she? You said she’s missing, but you don’t expect that there’s—what d’you call it—some kind of foul play?” He grimaced at the last two words. His foot tapped more energetically.
Helen leaned forward. The room was so tiny that they’d all been sitting with their knees nearly touching. She used this proximity to place her fingers gently on Chambers’ right knee. He stopped tapping the foot.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m nervous. Obviously.”
“Yes,” Helen said. “I can see that. Why?”
“It puts me in a bad light,
doesn’t it? All this about Lottie. I could have been the last one to see her. That doesn’t look good.”
“We don’t yet know who was last to see her,” St. James said.
“And if it gets into the papers…” Chambers hugged himself closer. “I give music lessons to children. It’s hardly going to be good for business if it gets known that one of my pupils disappeared after her lesson with me. I’d rather that didn’t happen. I live a quiet life here and I’d like very much to keep it that way.”
There was sense in that, St. James had to admit. Chambers’ livelihood was at stake, and no doubt their presence and their questions about Charlotte were illustrating how delicate his grip was upon it. Nonetheless, his reaction to their visit seemed extreme.
St. James pointed out to Chambers that whoever had abducted Charlotte—assuming she had been abducted and was not hiding somewhere with a friend—had to be familiar with the route she took from the school to her music lesson and from there to her home.
Chambers agreed. But her school was a brief walk from his house and there was only one way in and out of the immediate vicinity—the way St. James and Helen had come—so learning Lottie’s route would not have been a time-consuming task for anyone, he said.
“Have you noticed anyone hanging about in the last few days?” St. James asked.
Chambers looked as if he would have liked to say yes, if only to take the spotlight away from himself. But he said no, no one at all. Of course, he went on more hopefully, there were foot police in the area—one could hardly avoid noticing them—and the occasional odd tourist taking a wrong turn and ending up in Marylebone instead of Regent’s Park. But other than them and the usual people one expected to see like the postman, the dustmen, and the working people who hung about the Prince Albert pub at lunchtime, there had been no one who had seemed out of place. On the other hand, he didn’t get out much, so Mr. St. James would do well to ask at the other houses in the close. Someone had to have seen something, right? How could a child simply disappear without anyone noticing something out of sorts? If she’s disappeared. Because she could be with Breta. This could be another of Breta’s tricks.
Helen said, “But there’s something more, isn’t there, Mr. Chambers?” in a voice that was soft with sympathy. “Isn’t there something more you’d like to tell us?”
He looked from her to St. James. St. James said, “There’s someone in the house with you, isn’t there? Someone you rushed up the stairs to talk to when we first arrived?”
Damien Chambers blushed to the colour of plum pith. He said, “It’s nothing to do with this. Honestly.”
Her name was Rachel, he told them in a low voice. Rachel Mountbatten. No relation, of course. She was a violinist with the Philharmonic. They’d known each other for months and months. They’d gone out to a late dinner tonight. He’d asked her back for a drink and she’d seemed happy to oblige and when he’d invited her upstairs to his room…It was their first time together in that way. He wanted it perfect. Then there’d come their knock at his door. And now this.
“Rachel’s…well, she’s not exactly free,” he explained. “She thought it was her husband at the door when you knocked. Shall I call her down? I’d rather not. I expect it’ll cook things between us. But I’ll fetch her if you like. Although,” he added, “it’s not like I’d use her for an alibi or anything if it came down to it. I mean, if an alibi is going to be necessary. That’s not exactly the done thing, is it?”
But because of Rachel, he went on, he’d prefer to be kept in the background of whatever it was that had happened to Lottie. He knew it sounded heartless and it wasn’t as if he wasn’t concerned about the little girl’s whereabouts, but this thing with Rachel was awfully important to him…. He hoped they understood.
On their way back to St. James’s car, Helen said, “Curiouser and curiouser, Simon. Something’s off with the mother. Something’s off with Mr. Chambers. Are we being used?”
“For what?”
“I don’t know.” She slid into the MG and waited until he had joined her and switched on the ignition before she continued. “No one’s behaving as I would expect. Eve Bowen, whose daughter has vanished off the street, wants no police involved despite the fact that in her position at the Home Office she could well have the cream of Scotland Yard at her fingertips with no one the wiser. Dennis Luxford, who by all rights should be wild to pursue the story, wants nothing to do with it. Damien Chambers, with a lover upstairs—and I’m willing to bet he had no intention of producing her for us—is afraid of being connected with the disappearance of a ten-year-old girl. If it is a legitimate disappearance. Because perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps every one of them knows where Charlotte is. Perhaps that’s why Eve Bowen seemed so calm and why Damien Chambers seemed so anxious, when one would expect the opposite of them.”
St. James guided the car in the direction of Wigmore Street. He turned towards Hyde Park without replying.
Helen went on. “It wasn’t your inclination to take this on, was it?”
“I’ve no expertise in this area, Helen. I’m a forensic scientist, not a private eye. Give me bloodstains or fingerprints and I’ll produce a half dozen answers to your questions. But with something like this, I’m out of my depth.”
“So why…?” She gazed at him. He could feel her reading his face with her usual acumen. “Deborah,” she said.
“I told her I’d speak to Eve Bowen, that’s all. I told her I’d urge her to bring in the police.”
“You did do that,” Helen pointed out. They negotiated the traffic congestion at Marble Arch and made the turn into Park Lane with its curve of brightly lit hotels. “What’s next, then?”
“We can go two ways. Either handle it ourselves until Eve Bowen breaks or bring in Scotland Yard without her approval.” He glanced away from the road at her. “I don’t have to tell you how easy the latter would be.”
She met his gaze. “Let me consider it.”
Helen kicked off her shoes inside the front door of the building in which she lived. She whispered, “Mercy,” at the sweet sensation of feet being released from agonising servitude to the god of fashion, and scooping them up, she padded wearily across the marble entry and up the stairs to her flat, six rooms on the first floor of a late Victorian building, with a drawing room overlooking a rectangle of green that was South Kensington’s Onslow Square. A light, as she had seen from the street, was on in the drawing room. Since it wasn’t on a timer and since she hadn’t turned it on before leaving for Simon’s lab that morning, its beacon glowing through the sheer curtains on the balcony door told her she had a visitor. It could be only one person.
She hesitated outside the door, her key in her hand. She reflected on Simon’s words. How easy it would be indeed to bring in Scotland Yard without Eve Bowen’s knowledge or approval, especially since a detective inspector from the Yard’s CID was at this moment waiting for her somewhere beyond this heavy oak door.
A word to Tommy was all that would be required. He would take it from there. He would see to it that all the appropriate measures were taken: listening devices placed on telephones where the Yard deemed it necessary; background checks on everyone remotely involved with the Junior Minister, The Source editor, and their daughter; a minute analysis of the two letters received; an army of detective constables to walk the streets of Marylebone in the morning, interviewing potential witnesses to the girl’s disappearance and scouring every inch of the borough for a clue that would explain what had happened to Charlotte Bowen this day. Prints would be taken and handed over to the National Fingerprint Office. Descriptions of Charlotte would be inputted into the PNC. The case would be given top priority, and the best officers available would be assigned to it. Tommy, in fact, would probably not be involved at all. Undoubtedly the case would be handled by people more powerful than he in Scotland Yard. Once he let it be known that the daughter of Eve Bowen had been kidnapped, the search for the child would be taken out of his hands.
Which meant, of course, that the Yard would follow established procedures. Which meant, of course, that the media would be informed.
Helen frowned at the key ring in her palm. If she could depend upon Tommy and Tommy alone as the police officer involved…But she couldn’t, could she?
She called his name as she swung the door open. He answered, “In here, Helen,” and she followed the sound of his voice to the kitchen, where he stood watch over the toaster, with his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows, his collar unbuttoned and tie removed, and a jar of Marmite open and ready on the work top. He held a batch of papers. He was reading from these with the kitchen light glinting off his rumpled blond hair, and he looked over the top of his spectacles at her as she dropped her shoes to the floor.
“Late night,” he said, setting his papers on the work top and his spectacles on top of them. “I’d almost given you up.”
“That’s not your dinner, is it?” She lumped her shoulder bag onto the table, gave a look through the day’s post, pulled out a letter from her sister Iris, and carried it over to Tommy. He put his hand beneath her hair in his usual fashion—his palm warm against the back of her neck—and kissed her. First her mouth, then her forehead, then her mouth again. He held her against his side as he waited for his toast. She crackled open her letter, saying, “It’s not, is it?” And when he didn’t reply immediately, “Tommy, tell me that’s not all you’ve had for dinner. You are the most exasperating man. Why don’t you eat?”
He pressed his mouth to the side of her head. “Time gets away from me.” He sounded tired. “I spent most of the day and on into the evening with the crown prosecutors on the Fleming case. Statements being taken from all parties. Charges being brought. Lawyers making demands. Reports being requested. Press conferences being organised. I forgot.”