A dimly lit and heavily curtained room greeted him. A fire was sinking in the hearth, discreet electric lamps illuminated a polished table, chairs had been carelessly abandoned. There was a lingering scent of cigar smoke on the air but no trace of food or drink. Head in hands, a dark-haired woman sat at the head of the table. Her low-cut, sleeveless dark red gown revealed a magnificent if unfashionable bosom and white shoulders. She raised her head, sighed, took off her earrings and unpinned her glossy black hair which fell to her shoulders. The simple gesture had the effect of changing her appearance from that of a tone-deaf duchess who’d just endured the whole of the Ring cycle to that of a tired girl in dressing-up clothes.
‘Mrs Freemantle! An exhausting evening?’
Joe’s question was greeted with a groan. ‘Not as exhausting as it’s going to get!’ she said with foreboding. ‘What’s this? A police raid? Not sure I can cope with a police raid just now, Commander. That was a particularly draining session. I gave my all.’
‘Sorry to hear that, Minerva. Seems to have invigorated your audience though. I passed them on my way in. Don’t worry! I skulked behind a laurel bush. No one noticed me. Wouldn’t want a police presence to put the punters off!’
‘Very considerate of you, I’m sure. And now, if you wouldn’t mind, show a little more consideration will you, love, and shove off! I’m knackered.’
Joe grinned and went to open a cupboard by the fireplace. He found a bottle of eighteen-year-old Macallan and two glasses and poured out generous measures. He added a few drops of iced water from a pitcher on the table to one of the glasses and handed it to Mrs Freemantle. She sipped her drink delicately, her eyes on Joe over the top of her glass. He drank his whisky quickly and put the glass on the mantelpiece. In a proprietorial way he bent and poked at the fire, damping it down for the night, and carefully placed the fireguard in position. He walked around the room turning off the lights one by one and lastly flung back the heavy brocade curtains.
‘That’s enough for tonight, Maisie, love.’
He took her in his arms and stroked her hair. ‘Time you were upstairs in bed, safely in the arms of the law! We’ll talk in the morning.’
Joe poured a cup of tea from the six o’clock tray discreetly delivered to the door by Alice and went to hand it to Maisie. Bathed, shaved and dressed, he was already into his day and eager to get on but he was reluctant to leave without the comforting and intimate routine of exchange of gossip and friendly insult. He stirred her awake and waved the fragrant cup under her nose. As she shook herself into consciousness he remarked, ‘It’s April, Maisie. Damned nearly the end of April.’
‘So?’ she said, mystified.
‘Four years since we met in Simla!’
‘Good Lord! Only four years? You sure? Seems more like ten. Can’t say I’ve ever bothered with anniversaries. You’re too damned romantic . . . can get quite annoying. Did the paper come?’
‘Here it is. Full of details of the royal birth. To the Duke and Duchess of York, a daughter. Little Lady Elizabeth. Fourth lady in the kingdom and all that. You’d think that with a general strike looming they could come up with something a bit more serious on the front pages.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. What’s more serious than new life? Makes a nice change to think about birth instead of death . . . for me at any rate. Give it ’ere.’
‘Tell me about your evening, Maisie. Seemed pretty successful from where I was standing. Emotion swirling thickly around, you’d say!’
‘It was good. Better for some than others, of course. It always is. Never held a seance yet where all the punters got through. Just as well. The new bugs would often rather just watch and listen and not participate. They like to get my measure and hear the exchanges with the old hands. When they’re confident, they’ll try for a contact. There were three approaches last night. Out of eight guests around the table – that’s not bad.’
Maisie, he knew, preferred to speak only glancingly of her work as a medium. She could never be certain that Joe believed in what she did. Nor could Joe. A profound sceptic, he had had his firm beliefs shaken to their foundations by Maisie’s powers one night in Simla. Working under her professional name of Minerva Freemantle, she had been coerced by Joe into helping him to pursue a murder enquiry. They had fallen, since their return from India, into a routine of discussing her occupation as the remarkably successful and profitable business that it was. Profitable, certainly, but Maisie was convinced that her work had therapeutic value. If someone desperately needed her help to make contact with a loved one who had passed over – and eight years after the war there were still many of these – the help would be given and free of charge if the client could not afford to pay. Her many well-heeled and grateful callers made up for any losses. She owned her own smart house in its discreet square in an increasingly fashionable area and had, as long as Joe had known her, been financially independent. Emotionally independent also, he recognized with some relief. He sometimes wondered if she filed Joe Sandilands under the heading of emotional charity case. She was difficult to read. He accepted the comfort and support their relationship offered but it was not a connection which could ever be made public and both acknowledged this.