Enter Pale Death
CHAPTER 1
LONDON. JUNE 1933.
The card arrived at the breakfast table sealed in an unassuming brown business envelope delivered with the morning post. Catching sight of her name on it in handwriting she recognised as she sorted through the pile, Lily fished it out and put it with the rest of her mail. This consisted largely of unwanted advertising material coyly addressed to “The Lady of the House.” While her husband grunted and exclaimed over his own morning’s haul, Lily read her message, eyes widening briefly in excitement. She passed a hand delicately over her mouth to smother a deceiving yawn.
“Everything all right, Lily? You’re letting your egg congeal.”
“Not quite awake yet, darling.” She slipped the card back into its envelope and shuffled it in with the rest. She shrugged one shoulder. Nonchalant. Bored. “Here’s another invitation to buy one of those floor-cleaning machines from Harrods. Nothing personal—they seem to be targeting the housewives of Hampstead,” she murmured, passing over a flyer singing the praises of Mr. Hoover’s latest invention. “It beats as it sweeps as it cleans, apparently.”
Her husband sighed, took it dutifully and favoured it with a cursory look. He gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Have you really read this, Lil? Look—it claims to work according to a new cleaning principle: positive agitation. It beats out the dirt and extracts the whole unpleasant mess, leaving behind a fresh home you can be proud of. I’m all for a little positive agitation! I shall adopt it as my motto.” He returned, still chuckling, to his own correspondence.
“We could do with a new cleaner, but they are expensive. I’ll see what Emma thinks. She’s getting a bit cronky—had you noticed?—and could do with a bit of extra help.” Lily peered across the table at her husband’s copy of the Times, lying open at the sports page, and read the headlines upside-down with no difficulty. “Gracious! Can Middlesex possibly have lost to Yorkshire? Again?”
She listened with half an ear to the genial huffing and puffing and the sporting explanations that followed her attempt to distract, preoccupied by the words she’d just read. In black ink, chiselled characters on a white card:
My office. 9:00 Tuesday. I have a problem I’d like you to help me with. S.
Waylaid by memories, Lily fought back a smile and lowered her eyes to her plate in case they were shining with more emotion than could reasonably be accounted for by a congealed egg.
Her husband rumbled on companionably, reminding her quite unnecessarily of his imminent business trip, as he called his secretive forays into Europe. “Packing coming along is it?… Good … I say—it’s beginning to look more like ten days now with this excursion into the Black Forest. Ugh! Pop two extra ties in, will you, love? Oh, and shove in a pair of long-johns—we’re promised a flight in an aeroplane. Nasty, draughty things, aeroplanes.”
“Yes, dear. Will six pairs of underpants do? There’s bound to be an in-house laundry service. Browning or Beretta? I wasn’t sure, so I’ve left that for you to decide.”
“Oh, Browning I think. I’m hardly likely to use it, so I may as well impress them with the bulk. German military tailoring hardly minimises the size of the opposition’s bulges; in fact, I think that’s the point of it. They’ll be eyeing up my Browning while I’m admiring their Lugers. Both useless for close-up work. On second thought, I’ll pop the Beretta in there as well. Don’t bother with hats, darling. I’m planning to buy something suitable when I get to Berlin. Bit of local cover called for—don’t want to be taken for an Englishman on holiday. Would you find me fetching in a green felt Tyrolean with a feather in the side? What do you say, Lil? Lil? Are you listening?”
She gave him the cheerful mechanical reassurances he expected.
“Well, I have to dash now … Look, my dearest Lily …” He came round the table and took her hands in his, suddenly earnest. He gave her the devastating smile that had knocked her for six so many years before. “Just go and get one of those machines … those vacuum thingamies … you know what I mean … I see the very idea of one brings a flush of excited anticipation to your damask cheek.” He winked and caressed the damask cheek. “Now I wonder how Harrods could possibly know I’ve just had a pay rise?”
He’d guessed. Of course he had. That was one of the penalties you paid for being married to the smartest man in the kingdom. She handed him his briefcase, put her arms round his neck and kissed him. He bit her ear.
LILY WENTWORTH (AS was) entered the reception hall of Scotland Yard at ten minutes to nine on Tuesday morning and announced herself. She acknowledged with annoyance that her knees were trembling and she was breathing fast. The formidable building still had the power to intimidate, however often she ventured into it. Everyone else was walking purposefully up and down the tiled corridors wearing a police uniform or a business suit with bowler hat and briefcase. In her lady-heading-for-Liberty’s outfit, she felt herself doubly an outsider. Staff changed swiftly at the Yard, and no one called out a friendly “Wotcher, Lil!” How long had it been? She calculated that it was eleven years since she’d received the first of his summonses. Each one had changed her life. Some had left scars, on flesh and spirit.