Death of a Delft Blue

‘Postmark?’

‘I don’t remember. It was put by my plate at lunch-time by my landlady, and I just tore it open to see what it was. I only had an hour between leaving the garage and getting back there, and I always liked to drop in for a beer on my way back. My landlady’s only idea was a cup of tea, and I loathe tea, but one must drink something. Water isn’t interesting, and nobody over here makes decent coffee.’

‘Then did you hand over the chocolate-cream almost as soon as you received it?’

‘Yes. I shoved it and the small box of cigars — there were only five of them — in my overalls pocket and when I got to the pub I handed the chocolate-cream to Effie. She said, ‘Oh, ta, ducks, but I won’t eat it now, if you don’t mind. Got to have my dinner in a minute. Sure you wouldn’t like to keep a bit of it for yourself? I’m not all that keen on chocolate-cream. It’s apt to give me the bile.’

‘That’s why she gave most of it away to the other girl, then, so that takes care of that,’ said Gavin. ‘Now we come to the point. Who hates your guts sufficiently to want to murder you? Did you collect some Dutchman’s girl- friend or fall foul of a secret society while you were in the Netherlands at any time?’

Florian rallied at the sound of the jesting tone. He smiled, showing wolfish teeth. Although Gavin had heard of this hideous smile from Laura, he was taken aback by it. He had not seen it before.

‘I am circumspectness itself when I’m abroad,’ said Florian, shutting off the smile and returning his expression to its former innocence and beauty.

‘Well, who would want to kill you?’ asked Gavin. ‘One doesn’t have enemies one doesn’t know about. Come along! Two innocent women are dead, through no fault of their own, because they swallowed poison which was obviously intended for you. Don’t worry about getting somebody into trouble. Don’t you realise that, if we don’t lay hands on this joker, he’s going to try again?’

‘Well, if that’s it…’ said Florian. ‘No, dash it, I can’t! What if I should be wrong?’

‘We’ll sort that one out. Tell us what you suspect. Give us something to go on, however wrong you turn out to be.’

‘You’ll swear he’ll get a sporting chance? You won’t go and hang the wrong man?’

‘It’s clear to me that you don’t think it is the wrong man. In any case, I don’t suppose he’ll be hanged. They discriminate nowadays, you know.’

‘Oh, well, in that case… look here, I know jolly well who it was. It was my brute of a cousin, Bernardo Rose.’

‘Thanks,’ said Gavin, unemotionally. He made a note, got up, nodded to Florian and went up the stairs to Bernard van Zestien and Binnie.

‘Did you get what you wanted from Florian?’ the old man enquired. ‘Did he answer your questions?’

‘Yes, he was most informative,’ Gavin replied.

‘I am glad. He can be difficult and obstinate. Perhaps at last he is learning a little commonsense. You will stay for dinner, Mr Gavin?’

‘As Mr Gavin I should like very much to accept, sir. As Policeman Gavin, I’m afraid I must be on my way.’

He drove into Norwich, telephoned a long telegram from police headquarters there to the Superintendent in Derbyshire and booked a room for the night. In the morning, immediately after an early breakfast, he drove to Kensington and had lunch with Dame Beatrice and his wife.

‘So there it is,’ he said, when, after lunch, he had told his story. ‘I must look up Bernardo Rose’s address.’

‘It’s the same as old Rebekah’s, I expect,’ said Laura. ‘You’ll find that she and Petra and Bernardo and Bernardo’s father and mother all muck in together. What’ll you bet?’

No wager was made, but Laura turned out to be right, or near enough for Gavin’s convenience and purpose. The two households occupied identical service flats in Golders Green, one above the other in the same building. The door was opened by Petra, whom he recognised from Laura’s description. She was clad in what his old-fashioned, untutored mind informed him was a ‘confection’. It was a pyjama-style negligee in rose-pink satin ornamented with silver sequins and, in Gavin’s respectful opinion, it accorded well with her slightly olive complexion and lustrous, beautifully-dressed dark hair. She smiled at the handsome, manly visitor.

‘Miss Rose, I believe,’ said Gavin. ‘I am a Scotland Yard police officer. I wonder whether I might have a word with your mother, Mrs Rebekah Rose?’

‘Mother isn’t up,’ said Petra. ‘Is it very important, or could you call again later?’

The point was settled by Rebekah herself, who yelled from somewhere inside the flat,

‘Is a young man? I wish!’

‘You had better come in then, Mr…’

‘Gavin — Detective Chief-Inspector Gavin of New Scotland Yard. My card.’

‘Oh — Gavin! Then you must be Mrs Gavin’s husband?’

‘Such is my lowly lot.’ He was admitted to a room furnished in the Chinese style of the English eighteenth century — expensively furnished, at that. Rather gingerly he seated himself upon a part-wicker chair upholstered in a golden damask cloth bestrewn liberally with dragons. He gazed upon lacquer screens, priceless embroideries in frames on the walls and, in a cabinet whose legs were in the form of lions, a collection of Ming china of undoubted authenticity.

He was not left long in contemplation of these riches. The door burst open and in came the waddling but redoubtable figure of Rebekah, followed by that of her daughter. Unlike the elegant Petra, Rebekah was wearing a quilted dressing-gown in screaming green bice. This was topped by a mauve turban. She looked like a tipsy gipsy queen.

Gavin stood up. Rebekah toddled towards him on slipshod, be-feathered mules and gave him both her plump hands. Her rings made excruciating indentations on his fingers and palms.