‘All right. Could have fallen in. Could have decided to do away with herself. But nasty rumours at the time said she could have been helped in. Certainly her being off the scene was handy for Steenie. And Frank wasn’t round the theatre the night she disappeared. It’s a long time ago, though. Just rumours.’
‘Do you think Steen would be capable of that sort of thing, Harry?’
‘If someone was in his way, Charlie, he’d be capable of anything.’
‘I see, a real bastard.’
There was a long pause. ‘Yes, a real bastard.’ Harry chuckled. ‘But you can’t help liking him. One of the most likeable lumps of shit I ever come across.’
They talked a bit more, but Harry was tiring quickly. He seemed to be having difficulty with the second pint, and had only drunk a third of it when he looked at his watch. ‘Better be on my way, you know, Charlie. Not as young as I was.’
‘Will there be trouble when you get back?’
‘No. I’ll pretend I’ve had a turn or something. Ah, you know, I don’t like that place. Still, not for long.’
‘Are you moving somewhere else?’
Harry smiled. ‘Join Lennie. Won’t be long now. Still, can’t complain.’
‘A whole life-time in the business.’
‘Yes. Did our first show when we was four. And our last one three years ago on some stupid television thing about the music-hall. Seventy-four years in the business, that was, Charlie. Seventy-four.’
‘And you wouldn’t have had it any other way.
‘Good God, yes. It was Lennie who wanted all that. I wanted to be a professional footballer.’
VI
Charles tried to think it all out on the Saturday morning. He’d woken without a hangover and even done a token tidying-up of his room. Then out for a newspaper and some rolls, and he was sitting in front of the gas fire with a cup of coffee. Glance at the paper; no particular interest in petrol queues or Ireland without Whitelaw, so he settled down to think about Jacqui and Steen.
What he had heard from Harry Chiltern was disturbing. True, the business about the dancer in the Thames sounded a bit too melodramatic-the kind of story that gets embroidered over the years-and probably started out just as an unfortunate coincidence. Charles discounted the facts of it; but it was significant that Marius Steen attracted that sort of accusation. It didn’t bode well for Jacqui.
Then there were the photographs and her own story. Something didn’t ring true there. He pieced it together. In June, Jacqui and Steen went to a party, which was attended by Sally Nash, now on trial at the Old Bailey on charges of controlling prostitutes. At this party a fairly insipid orgy took place. Some pictures were taken by a nameless photographer. All through this period (according to Jacqui) things were swinging between her and Steen. She even got pregnant by him. He arranged an abortion which went wrong and they went off to the South of France to recuperate. And there, apparently, had an idyllic time. This idyll had continued up until the previous Saturday, 1st December, when they last met. That was the day after the Sally Nash trial started, and the day that Marius Steen’s terrible show, Sex of One and Half a Dozen of the Other celebrated a thousand performances. And from that day on Jacqui had been unable to contact Steen. He had very deliberately told her to get lost, and when she didn’t take the hint, he’d sent her an obscene note. And according to Jacqui, the reason for this must be Steen’s fear of her being associated with him in the Sally Nash case because it might affect his chances of a knighthood. It was preposterous. Nobody would behave like that.
Charles wasn’t sure whether Jacqui believed she was telling the truth or not. She might have her own reasons for obscuring the issue. But, leaving that aside for a moment, he tried to make some sense of Steen’s behaviour.
The simplest explanation was that he had just got tired of Jacqui. That was quite possible, however well she thought the affair was going. He was a man who had always put it about a bit, as Harry Chiltern said. Jacqui was an attractive enough bit of stuff, but there were hundreds more like her and why should he stick to one? He’d be very unlikely to stay with her or marry her, particularly with a knighthood in the offing. As Jacqui herself admitted, she wasn’t the sort of consort for a ‘do with the Queen Mum’.
And, Charles’ mind raced on, Steen could have picked up a new tottie at the Sex of One… party on the Saturday night. That would explain the sudden change in his affections.
But as he thought of it, Charles knew the explanation was inadequate. Even if that had happened, it didn’t justify the violence of Steen’s attempts to get Jacqui off his back. No, Steen’s behaviour certainly suggested that he regarded her as a threat in some way. Perhaps she had tried to blackmail him…? Yes, that made sense. She had actually tried to use the photographs… perhaps to blackmail him into marrying her. (That would tie in with the pregnancy in the summer-an earlier attempt to force Steen’s hand.) She could have tried the blackmail approach on the Saturday afternoon; then, when Steen cut up rough, she realised she’d overstepped the mark and brought in Charles as a go-between to patch things up. That would even explain why she took him back to Archer Street from the Montrose. She’d just gone down there to look for any good-natured sucker.
But the new explanation wasn’t much more satisfactory than the first. For a start. Charles didn’t like to think of Jacqui in that light. And also he doubted whether she had the intelligence to be so devious. The only convincing bit was the thought of Steen as a frightened man. What was it he was afraid of?
Charles marshalled his knowledge of blackmailers’ habits. It was limited, all gleaned from detective novels. He got out the brown envelope and spread the photographs on his lap. His reaction to them had numbed. They just seemed slightly unwholesome now, like used tissues. Just photographs. What would Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey, Hercule Poirot and the rest have made of that lot? Charles made a cursory check for blood-stained fingerprints, the thread of a sports jacket made from tweed only available in a small tailor’s shop in Aberdeen, the scratch marks of an artificial hand or the faint but unmistakable aroma of orange blossom. The investigation, he concluded without surprise, yielded negative results. They were just photographs.
Just photographs. The phrase caught in his mind. Negative results. Yes, of course. Where were the bloody negatives? Jacqui had paid out a thousand pounds for something that could be reproduced at will. A very rudimentary knowledge of detective fiction tells you that any photographic blackmailer worth his salt keeps producing copies of the incriminating material until he’s blue in the face. It would be typical of Jacqui’s naivety to believe that she was dealing with an honest man who had given her the only copies in existence.
If this were so, and the photographer was putting pressure on him, then Steen’s reactions were consistent. He had reason to be frightened. But why should he be frightened of Jacqui? Charles shuffled through his pockets for a two p piece and went down to the phone.
‘Jacqui?’
‘Yes.’ She sounded very low.
‘All right?’
‘Not too good.’
‘Listen, Jacqui, I think I may be on to something about the way Steen’s behaving.’
‘What?’ She sounded perkier instantly.
‘Jacqui, you’ve got to tell me the truth. When you bought those photographs…’
‘Yes?’
‘Did you buy the negatives too?’
‘No. I didn’t. But he’d destroyed them. He said so.’
‘I see. And did you mention to Steen that you’d got the photographs at any time?’
‘No. I wanted it to be a surprise-a present. He had mentioned them vaguely, said he was a bit worried. So I fixed to get them.’
‘When were they actually handed over to you?’
‘Last Saturday evening.’
‘And you never mentioned them even when you tried to ring Steen?’
