The Bee's Kiss(47)

‘You look like a red, red rose that’s newly sprung in June,’ he said. ‘And my sergeant thinks you’re a “little corker” – whatever that is! Now, just be careful where you go pointing your arrows, Diana. I don’t want to be called back to arrest you.’

When he spoke the last sentence, his eyes locked with the defiant gaze of her grandmother and held it until she looked away.





Chapter Eleven


They had reached the end of the drive before either of his companions spoke.

‘Ugly scene back there, sir?’ said Armitage, negotiating the tight turn between the gateposts.

‘Not pretty,’ said Joe heavily. ‘Sadly, I fear Orlando has it right – there is something evil lurking about that lovely house.’

‘It’s Granny,’ said Armitage decisively. ‘She’s right in the middle of it all, I’ll bet. Pity they can’t just paint her out of the picture.’

‘Imagine what the atmosphere was like when Beatrice was alive and kicking!’ Westhorpe found her voice. ‘The two of them together! Must have been unbearable. They really made poor Audrey’s life hell on earth.’ She paused tantalizingly for a moment. ‘I expect you’re both dying to hear what she had to say?’

‘Do tell,’ encouraged Armitage.

Westhorpe cleared her throat and composed herself. ‘I take it you both understand what is meant by the term “lesbian”?’

The car appeared to hit a rut but the sergeant quickly had it under control.

‘Well, she was one. A lesbian. According to Audrey who, you must agree, was supremely well placed to judge.’

They nodded.

‘But that’s not all and here, I’m afraid, my knowledge of the correct sexual terminology threatens to let me down and I have to rely on my readings of Havelock Ellis which are –’

‘Get on with it, Westhorpe!’ said Joe. ‘Four letter words will do if they’re all that come to mind.’

‘Very well. According to Audrey, who, having a theatrical background, is unsurprised by these things – and I interpret what she had to say, you understand – her vocabulary is decidedly –’

‘Westhorpe!’

Westhorpe cleared her throat. ‘The Dame was a psychosexual hermaphrodite.’

‘Come again, Constable?’ Armitage was mystified.

‘She alternated between heterosexual activities and a subordinated but significant tendency towards sexual inversion.’

‘Sir – what’s she on about?’ Armitage appealed to Joe.

‘I think she’s established that the Dame batted for both sides,’ said Joe, bemused.

‘Is that what they say?’ Tilly took up the tale again. ‘Well, anyway, she had male lovers, she had female lovers.’

Armitage was stunned. ‘What? At the same time?’

‘Ah. That much I can’t say. Consecutively – certainly; simultaneously or orgiastically – who knows? Audrey didn’t go in for titillating details of that nature. She was very direct.’

‘All the same,’ said Armitage, understanding dawning in his voice, ‘I can see why Miss Blount shied away from taking the lid off all this in front of a mixed audience. Good Lord! Dirty old devil! Well, who’d have thought it! I mean, I quite fancied her myself. The Dame, I mean.’

‘Many men did,’ said Westhorpe coldly.

‘But she looked so . . . so . . . female . . . I mean . . .’ Armitage was still struggling to reassess the Dame’s allure.

‘Well, of course she did,’ snapped Westhorpe. ‘I don’t believe women of this persuasion choose to go about looking calculatedly unattractive. If you were imagining a monocle-wearing Burlington Bertie from Bow, Sergeant, you would be way off beam. That’s all very well in the music hall but I’ll bet when Ella Shields has taken her last curtain call she puts out her cigar, unscrews her monocle and climbs into something short and silky to go home to her husband. I don’t believe transvestitism,’ she stumbled over the word, ‘should be confused with inversion.’

‘No indeed,’ said Joe, trying to keep a straight face. He was playing with the outlandish picture of a crop-haired female in ginger plus-fours in the tattooed arms of a chief petty officer. ‘But tell us, Westhorpe, was any mention made of her male lovers?’

‘Her principal male lover was what Audrey called “her bit of rough stuff”. An ex-naval man. The Donovan that her mother handed to us on a plate. Good-looking and plausible, according to Audrey, and he seemed to exert a strong influence over Beatrice. Though it could well have been the other way round, don’t you think? They were, at all events, closely associated in dubious goings-on in London. She’s no idea what was involved.’