At last Joe was in possession of the awful truth.
‘Are you saying the Dame was preparing to betray her country to the Bolsheviks?’
Armitage’s laugh was derisory and triumphant. ‘God no! I never thought I’d hear myself say it but – you’re wrong on two counts there, Captain!
‘For a start, her country, the one she really paid allegiance to, was not England. Given the chance, she was intending to foul up things for the British fleet and bring about a victory for the country she truly cared about – Germany.’
Joe felt suddenly awash with horror. Armitage must have been watching his every movement intently. He produced his brandy flask. ‘Gulpers, I’d say, sir. Go on!’
Joe was thankful for the warmth searing its way down his throat. Too late he remembered who had offered the drink.
‘It’s all right,’ said Armitage, amused. ‘Only the best scotch in there. I’ll have one myself.’
‘What a headache she must have given the various departments once they found out! But how did they get to hear?’
‘One of the girls who killed herself – no idea who . . . no need for me to know that – is understood to have written a letter to her highly placed father confessing all and warning him. Action was swiftly taken.’
‘Ah! The sting!’ Joe mused. ‘The venomous shaft she placed killed the victim but brought her own death with it. I like a neat, classical ending! But I see the problem: difficult to charge her with anything because, technically, she’d done nothing wrong. Her crime was in the future. Conspiracy, perhaps?’
‘You’re forgetting the friends in high places.’
‘Couldn’t one of them have been primed to take her out on to some terrace and hand her a brandy and a revolver, in the good old British tradition?’
‘There’d still have been public interest aroused. And these days we have to consider the reactions of the bloody press at every turn. They don’t just turn up and meekly take dictation from the Home Office any more. She was a colourful woman and very much in the public eye. There’d have been talk in any circumstances – but the tragic, though understandable, death at the hands of a burglar is a nine-day wonder. Cat burglars have become a national obsession – everyone was expecting something like this to happen. Just a question of time. She was unlucky. No one minds the press running with that story – let them enjoy it. But think, sir . . . if the truth came out about the Queen Bea . . . Remember the scandal of the trial of Sir Roger Casement after the war. We’re still in the outfall of that seven years on.’
‘And he was an Irishman! How much worse if a woman regarded by some as an English heroine were similarly exposed!’
‘More or less the conclusion the department arrived at, sir. Thought you’d get there in the end.’
‘So, they send in Armitage under cover – and what cover! A CID sergeant no less! He watches his subject go up to her room – noting that she’s alone – sets off outdoors on patrol wearing a cape and, on his two good legs, shins up the building, breaks in, murders the Dame and spends some time laying confusing evidence that will send the Plod off in several wrong directions.’
Joe paused, deep in thought. ‘No. You didn’t break in, did you, Bill? No sound of glass smashing reported by anyone . . .’ Then, seeing his way through, ‘You let yourself in by means of an unlatched casement. You’d been on patrol throughout the building earlier that evening. What was to stop you getting into her room – pass key part of the security man’s kit? Perhaps you borrowed one from a maid on her 9 p.m. rounds? And you unlatched the window while she was down below at the party? Then, when the hour comes for your external patrol, you simply push the window open silently from outside. You kill the Dame, steal her necklace, mess up her clothing to make it look personal, bash in the glass, muffling the sound with a Ritz towel, and redistribute the glass from the window. There, that’ll give someone a double headache! You probably put the jemmy and emeralds inside the pockets of the cape . . . I did wonder what that bulge was when you sat by me at the coffee stall . . . no, all right! I didn’t! Any blood splashing would have been fended off by the waterproofing of the cape and would have been invisible outside in the dark on a wet night.
‘So you go back out through the window, parting company with the poker halfway down . . .’ Joe hesitated. ‘Then you smarten up, with all the time in the world, in the staff cloakroom and rush about efficiently when called upon later on the discovery of the body. Of course, as it turned out, you didn’t have all the time in the world. You hadn’t bargained for Tilly Westhorpe taking it into her head to pay the Dame an impromptu visit. Very nearly wrecked everything for you, Bill. No wonder you wanted her off the job. Sharp-eyed, saucy young Tilly watching your every move! Playing detective! Nightmare!’