‘Somewhere special,’ he said, threading his way through the streets of Mayfair.
Reaching their destination, he handed the keys to a commissionaire and held out an arm to Tilly.
‘The Ritz?’ she said wonderingly as she stepped out. He was pleased to hear the disappointment in her tone as she added, ‘You didn’t say we were still working, sir.’
‘Well, it may not be unadulterated pleasure, having dinner with the guv’nor,’ he smiled, ‘but it’s not work. I think I told you, and I say again, the Jagow-Joliffe case is closed. Done up in pink string and filed away from sight for the next seventy-five years. It seemed appropriate to wrap it all up here where it all started. And we’ll get a jolly good dinner. We’ve deserved it!’
He glanced approvingly at the reflection in the many glittering mirrors which flanked their progress to their table. He almost wished Cyril were on hand to record the occasion but he remembered that no camera flash journalists ever breached the defences of the Ritz. Probably all off in Hyde Park, anyway, busy snapping the militant aristocracy.
As they settled, he looked around, grateful that the management had been as good as its word and given him what he had asked for – a discreet table at some distance from the others.
In spite of Joe’s agitation the evening seemed to be going well. Tilly was calm, attentive, responsive and amusing. The perfect partner. Joe thought she would undoubtedly be granted Maisie’s seal of approval on this showing. Maisie’s? His own, too. For a desolate moment he was aware of a void in his life, a loneliness, and played with the thought of returning from such an evening with such a girl on his arm and no need to say goodnight. ‘Listening to too many popular songs,’ he decided. ‘Brace up, Sandilands!’
They chattered happily through three courses and Tilly looked relieved when Joe suggested to the waiter that they might like a pause before the desserts were presented. Now or never. Joe reached into his pocket and produced a white card. He watched Tilly’s face as he put it down in front of her.
Her eyes widened slightly and she stared at the photograph of the dreaming face. The familiar face. The family face. Silently she trailed a forefinger around the cut-out line of the photograph.
‘Thank you for your sensitivity, Joe. How like you to have censored the rest of the . . . unpleasantness. It must have been . . . unpleasant.’
‘Can you confirm that this is Marianne? Your older sister?’
‘Of course. But there were others. What have you done with them?’
‘I have them safe and they’ve been doctored in the same way. I was going to reassure the subjects that all danger has passed from them but . . .’ He paused and held her gaze. ‘I can’t do that until the negatives are in my possession or, at the very least, I am confident that they have been destroyed.’
‘They have been destroyed, Joe.’
He waited, willing her to go on.
‘They were handed over to me and I put the evil things on the fire,’ she said finally. ‘They made a fine blaze.’
‘I’d be interested to know how they made their way into your hands?’
‘I’m sure you would. “Still ferreting,” Bill would say.’ She smiled. ‘When they give you a knighthood you can have it for your motto. You must let me devise your coat-of-arms.’
Joe grinned. ‘What do you see? A ferret rampant gardant and above, a scroll saying semper vigilans?’
‘Something like that. Well, Mr Ferret, the negatives were brought to London by that scheming Audrey. She was intent on raising money to finance an idle future by selling them to me for whatever she could get.’
‘I think Audrey had something even more valuable to sell to you,’ suggested Joe.
Tilly smiled as though acknowledging an opponent’s clever chess move. ‘My life or liberty, you mean? Yes, that. She recognized me the moment I took off my hat at King’s Hanger. Though I didn’t register her as anything other than a maid, she saw me going into the Dame’s room. As she said, she was interested to catch a sight of Bea’s latest conquest! She lurked about and watched me come out later . . . much later . . . and go down in the lift.’
‘And your presence could perhaps have been explained away when she realized you were a policewoman . . . had it not been for one extraordinary fact.’
Tilly nodded and looked down at her plate.
‘You went into the Dame’s room wearing a black lace dress and black gloves and emerged in a silver-grey dress – a bit long for you and hitched up at the hips with a silver belt – and a pair of spanking clean white gloves. Perhaps Audrey even recognized the dress – it was one of her mistress’s best. She had been planning to wear it at the Savoy the next night.’