The Tango School Mystery Read online

  Scrivener was clearly a fantasist who wouldn't be tolerated within a million miles of a serious newspaper. But I was determined to drain him for any real information he had.

  "When you were researching your Hitler book, did you meet Gervase Pope?"

  Scrivener nodded. "I certainly did. Mr Pope was a keen student of Hitler's life and philosophy. We discussed them at length in his comfortable apartment."

  "Did you also discuss how Pope had been interned during the war as a security risk? Put there on the evidence of letters Clapham supplied to Oscar Maundsley."

  "Of course, I knew about that but I thought it politic not to mention the matter. Especially as Mr Pope was showing me his excellent collection of memorabilia."

  "In the glass cabinet?"

  "You've seen it yourself?" Scrivener seemed surprised.

  "I gave it a quick shufti. There was no sign of any curling tongs. But an SS dagger was missing. Could Pope have killed Clapham with that dagger?"

  "Why ask me? I wasn't privy to the personal relationship between the two - although I imagine it could not have been warm."

  "When you were researching your book, did you only meet Gervase Pope at his apartment?"

  "Yes. Twice, I recall."

  "Not anywhere else?"

  "No."

  "So you wouldn't know whether he had any favourite hidey-holes?"

  "Hidey-holes?"

  "A country cottage, maybe. A favourite hotel. A distant relative whom he occasionally visited."

  "We never discussed his private life." Scrivener shot me a sly look. "But why ask these questions?"

  "Just general background. You know the type you pick up from your contacts who've heard rumours from people who thought they might be true."

  Scrivener nodded as though I'd just explained Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

  He said: "So can we talk about my new book?"

  "The one you're still writing?"

  "Yes. I will prove beyond doubt that Mrs Simpson is a man."

  "Sounds like a cock and balls story to me," I said.

  Scrivener frowned. "If you can only make cheap jokes…"

  "I can make quite expensive ones when I have to."

  I stood up and moved towards the door. Scrivener heaved himself out of his chair and followed me.

  I turned. "One last question about Gervase Pope's memorabilia collection. Did he say where he got all that stuff?"

  "Dealers, I believe."

  "Which dealers?"

  "Specialists in that kind of material."

  "Any of them local?"

  Scrivener's gaze flicked left. A sure sign there was something he didn't want to tell me.

  "Could be," he said.

  I said: "Some of the description cards in the cabinet had a little B&H in the corner. Did that mean anything to you?"

  "Brighton and Hove," Scrivener said, unconvincingly.

  "You know as well as I do that it couldn't be that."

  Scrivener shrugged. "I wasn't going to mention it because I've promised to be discreet. You understand the sellers don't like it known to the general populace that they deal in important historic memorabilia."

  "Especially members of the populace who were being bombed and threatened with invasion only a few years ago by people who originally owned it."

  Scrivener cleared his throat. "The B&H stands for Box and Hartley. They deal in reproduction antique furniture, their main business. But they have a confidential side-line in memorabilia from the Third Reich."

  "And where would I find Box and Hartley."

  "The shop is in The Lanes. But there's only one Box-Hartley these days. With a hyphen. Unity Box-Hartley."

  "Unusual given name."

  "Yes, she gave it to herself. Her name was originally Dorothy although everyone called her Dotty - Dotty Box. It became Box-Hartley after she married Crispin Hartley who originally owned the reproduction furniture shop. But he died just two months after the marriage. Following the funeral, Dotty changed her name to Unity in memory of Unity Mitford."

  I recalled the story. "She was one of the Mitford sisters."

  "Yes. There were six of them. They first made their name as socialites - bright young things, as they used to be known in the 'twenties and 'thirties," Scrivener said.

  "But Unity was a bad penny," I said. "She was a Nazi who hero-worshipped Hitler. He attended her wedding in Berlin. She shot herself when Britain declared war on Germany but made a mess of the job and lived - at least until after the war ended."

  Scrivener grinned like a man with a secret. "At least, that's the official version."

  "But no doubt one day you'll be telling the story you heard from the rumours that might have been true."

  "Someone has to," he said.

  Chapter 8

  I stepped out of Scrivener's house of fantasy feeling I needed to wash my hands.

  Or perhaps it was my brain that needed cleansing. Of the rubbish he'd been spouting. He could give Alice in Wonderland's White Queen a run for her money. She could only believe six impossible things before breakfast. Scrivener could do it before lunch, tea and dinner. And not limit himself to six.

  But, "oh my ears and whiskers", I was in danger of being as late for the action as the White Rabbit. I was haring about - these puns just slip out - trying to cover a murder and find a missing man. I wasn't making much progress at either. I needed some focus.

  I climbed into my MGB, fired up the engine, and drove towards Brighton. Traffic was heavy along the coast road. I tucked in behind a green Southdown double-decker bus and chugged along. The poster on the back of the bus carried the slogan: Keep Britain Tidy. It showed a blue cartoon man picking up a piece of litter. Or perhaps he'd dropped it. He looked shifty enough.

  Anyway, there was nothing tidy about my predicament.

  The more I thought about Clapham's murder and Gervase's disappearing act, the more I wondered whether they could be connected. Gervase certainly had the motive to kill Clapham. The SS dagger provided a means, too. But did he have the opportunity?

  I wondered, too, about how well Scrivener had known either Clapham or Gervase. He'd admitted speaking to them for his Hitler book, but that didn't make either of them his bosom buddy. The journo who wants to uncover big stories needs the knack of making his interviewee feel like a firm friend. Then the interview becomes like a cosy chat between good mates. Confidences are shared. Secrets are whispered. Skeletons are released from cupboards. But the old pals act only lasts for as long as the interview. And I should know.

  Besides, Scrivener lived in the land of make-believe. The man was obsessed with conspiracies. His mind was like a corkscrew. He couldn't think straight. Which made me wary of almost everything he'd told me.

  But there was one fact I felt I could rely on. That Gervase had bought many of his Nazi knick-knacks from Unity Box-Hartley. Perhaps she'd known Gervase better than Scrivener. Perhaps she'd have a clearer idea where he'd hide out.

  At the moment, I couldn't think of a more promising lead.

  I parked the MGB in East Street and hoofed it into The Lanes.

  Even though summer was in its dog days, the narrow streets were crowded with tourists. A pair of schoolgirls sniggered over engagement rings in a jeweller's window. An old bloke cricked his neck sideways to read the titles on some ancient volumes in a second-hand bookseller's. A blowsy woman with a henpecked husband in tow barged down the alley. He lumbered along with a huge copper kettle looped over one arm.

  I shouldered my way through the throng.

  I was thinking about how I should handle Unity Box-Hartley. If she was anything like her namesake, Unity Mitford, she'd be a handful. The Mitford woman had been a fanatic who made the Gestapo seem like the Band of Hope. No wonder she'd been Hitler's poster girl. She was rumoured to have borne the Führer a child. What did Eva Braun have to say about that? But the rumour could have been another hoax.

  If Box-Hartley was cut from the same uncompromising cloth as Unity
Mitford, she wouldn't take kindly to an intrusive journalist asking awkward questions. She sounded like the type who'd be on to you with a pair of red-hot pliers before you could say goodbye to your toenails.

  Box-Hartley's shop turned out to be a single-fronted building in a courtyard off Meeting House Lane. The place was in a position most browsers would miss unless they'd been tipped off to look out for it. But I guessed that was Box-Hartley's idea. If most of her trade was in Nazi relics, she wouldn't want a neon sign flashing the fact to passers-by. Her relic hunters would be a furtive crowd well-practised in sneaking up narrow passages and lurking in dark corners.

  But Box-Hartley's premises were smart enough. The fascia board above the window read: "Box-Hartley. Quality reproduction antique furniture." It featured the B&H logo I'd seen on the cards in Gervase's display case. The main item in the window was a small dark wooden table with a lot of fancy gilt work. It had those curvy legs which made the thing look as though it wanted to dance. Its price tag read: "£395". That was another clever ploy. If you lacked the kind of boodle to fork out for a table that'd barely hold your dinner plate, you weren't going to step into the shop.

  Unless of course you were on a personal blitzkrieg to Brighton for the special merchandise inside.

  I strode up to the door feeling a bit like Monty about to take on Rommel at El Alamein.

  But there's nothing like a surprise attack. So I flung open the door and hustled inside.

  A bell clanged noisily behind me and I jumped.

  Nerves.

  I don't normally suffer from them. But this was the first time I'd met a fully paid-up Nazi.

  I shouldn't have jumped. It was only a bell. What was I expecting? An air-raid siren?

  And, anyway, I scanned the shop and the place was deserted.

  I say shop, but the place was rather like stepping into someone's house. I was in a room about twenty feet square. It had a parquet floor - polished with a tub-load of elbow grease - and regency-stripe paper on the walls. The centre of the ceiling had one of those plaster rose arrangements that snooty Victorians liked to show off their new electric light.

  A selection of the repro antique furniture was arranged tastefully around the room. There was a Georgian commode made out of walnut. I'd have happily sat on it of a morning with my trousers around my ankles and leafed through the newspapers while I waited for nature to take its course. There was a regency whatnot with three shelves and a lot of fancy work on the legs. There was an Edwardian hat stand with enough hooks to hang a houseful of titfers. There was a chaise-longue upholstered in plush red velvet. It had a curved back at one end and a kind of scrolled arrangement carved in the wood at the other.

  There wasn't a Third Reich memento in sight. Not so much as an Iron Cross. But the Nazi rubbish would all be out the back.

  On the other side of the room, there was a business-like desk which obviously wasn't part of the goods for sale. It held a drift of papers. Behind the desk was an archway with a curtain drawn over it. Next to the archway was a corkboard. A couple of dozen business cards had been pinned to the board.

  I briefly wondered why the shop had been left unattended. But perhaps Box-Hartley was in the back fitting one of her special regulars with a pair of Waffen SS dress jackboots. Besides, there was no cash-register and a chance shoplifter was hardly likely to make off with a Georgian commode stuffed under his arm. Not through the crowds in the Lanes.

  I stepped smartly over to the desk to take a quick shufti. The papers on the desk seemed to be mostly invoices from suppliers. But Box-Hartley had fixed a "To Do Today" list to a clipboard which rested on the other papers.

  I leant over and read the list:

  Confirm order for Victorian bookcase.

  Phone accountant re tax.

  Hairdresser at 4.30.

  Delivery Cucking St.

  Check printer for new brochure.

  None of it seemed out of the ordinary. So I glanced at the corkboard. There were a couple of business cards for French polishers, another for an upholsterer, three for cabinet makers, one for a stationery supplier and a dozen more for various firms Box-Hartley evidently did business with.

  I was about to turn away, when my eye caught a card pinned in the bottom left-hand corner of the board. A card for the Dolores Esteban Tango Academy.

  It was the dance school where the Widow was hunting for a new husband. Was Box-Hartley learning to trip the light fantastic? Or was she also on the hunt for a terpsichorean hubbie?

  But before I had time to think about that, somewhere behind the archway curtain a lavatory flushed.

  I hurried to the other side of the room and admired the chaise-longue.

  Ten seconds later, I heard the curtain rustle as it was pulled aside.

  I turned from the chaise-longue.

  A tall slim woman was standing behind the desk. She had fair hair that fell to her shoulders in a row of carefully combed curls. She had a straight nose, thin lips and eyebrows which had been plucked within an inch of extinction. Her eyes were grey and hard like they'd been cast out of molten lead. She wore a dark blue pinstripe suit over a cream blouse. The suit had a tight-fitting jacket fastened with three buttons and a pencil skirt cut just below the knee.

  She looked at me with suspicious eyes and said: "The chaise-longue is a faithful reproduction of the one owned by the Edwardian actress Mrs Patrick Campbell."

  "The actress who was first to play the part of Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion," I said.

  Box-Hartley said: "You're very well informed." She made it sound like a criminal offence.

  So I pointed at the item and said: "No wonder she preferred the 'deep, deep peace of the double bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise-longue'."

  Unity frowned and stepped around the desk towards me. I half expected her to whip out the pliers. But I held my ground.

  Captain Courage!

  In a voice as warm as a penguin's tail, she said: "You don't look to me like a typical collector of reproduction antique furniture."

  I said: "I've never been much of a one for reproductions. I'm more interested in the real stuff."

  "We have no real stuff here."

  "That's not what I've heard."

  "Heard? From whom?"

  "Gervase Pope."

  That brought the Rhine maiden up sharp in her tracks. So I'd never met Gervase. But I knew his brother Gerald. His Holiness. Damn the man. I even worked for him. I was doing so now.

  And felt perfectly entitled to lie.

  Box-Hartley's eyebrows lifted. At least, I think that's what happened. As there wasn't much left of them, it looked a bit like a shadow moving over her forehead.

  She said: "You know Gervase Pope?"

  I said: "I've seen his collection." And that was the truth. "I know he bought most of it from you."

  "Who are you?"

  "I'm someone who has a few questions about Gervase Pope to ask," I said.

  Her shoulders snapped back, like General Von Rundstedt had just walked into the room. "I never answer questions about my customers. Our business is strictly confidential."

  "I can understand that. You wouldn't want ordinary decent people - especially people who'd lost loved ones in the war - knowing too much about the stuff I expect you keep out the back. No doubt the reproduction chaises-longues and commodes are a useful front."

  "My business is private and there is no reason why people should want to know about it."

  "Unless I choose to write a piece about it."

  "You're a newspaperman?" Unity hissed.

  "You're quick. Let's hope you're as quick with this one. I need some information about Gervase Pope. If you answer my questions - and I'm satisfied you've answered them honestly - I'll go away and you won't hear from me again. But if you want to play the high and mighty, I'm going back to write a full-page feature for the Evening Chronicle about this place. It will carry the headline: Nazi Fan's Bargain Bazaar."

  If the look Unity shot me had been an arti
llery shell, I'd have vaporised. Her eyes glowed with hatred.

  She said: "There was a time when there were strong men who knew how to deal with people like you."

  "And look what happened to them," I said.

  Unity turned, walked back to her desk and sat down behind it.

  "I have your word that if I answer your questions, you'll keep my business out of your newspaper?"

  "Cub's honour," I said with my hands in my pocket. And my fingers crossed.

  "Very well, what do you want to know?" she asked.

  "How long have you known Gervase Pope?"

  "About three years."

  "That would be about the time you came to work at this shop?"

  "Yes."

  "And shortly before you married Clive Hartley, your late husband?"

  "You know about that?" Unity said. She had a shifty look. Shuffled the papers on her desk nervously. Decided she was giving herself away. Sat back and folded her arms.

  I said: "We journalists have our sources. Did you know Gervase well?"

  "Not well. He was a customer."

  "How often did you meet him?"

  "Perhaps a dozen times over three or so years. He came to the shop to see what I had in stock. Other times, he ordered from a catalogue I sent him."

  I said: "Did Gervase Pope collect Nazi memorabilia because he had sympathy for the fascist cause?"

  "There are many reasons why people collect. Some have an academic interest in the history of the period."

  "And some have sympathy for the movement. Gervase Pope was one of them. Are you another?"

  Unity's eyes glared. She looked down at her desk. Tidied her papers into a neat pile.

  There was a silence.

  Then she said: "Yes."

  I said: "Sharing the same views as Gervase must have brought you closer?"

  "That is a naïve view. Trotsky and Stalin were both communists but they hated one another."