Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street (13 page)

Meade smiled again. ‘A lot of people do.'

‘Extraordinary, but not necessarily reprehensible,' Virginia said. ‘I have the greatest respect for any man who is prepared to throw off his heritage and make his own way in the world.'

‘For goodness sake, Virginia, this isn't one of your afternoon tea parties,' George said exasperatedly. ‘We're not here to make polite social chit-chat. Meade and his assistant have come to report their findings to us.'

‘I'm afraid you're wrong on two counts,' Alex Meade said. ‘The first is your assumption that Inspector Blackstone is my assistant. In actual fact, I am his.'

George ran his eyes up and down Blackstone's second-hand brown suit, which had not been improved in appearance by the soaking it had received out in the woods.

‘Really!' he said.

‘Really,' Meade agreed. ‘I'd have thought, for most people, that the fact he's an inspector, while I'm only a sergeant, would have given that away.'

‘I'd assumed, since Blackstone is a foreigner, that
you
would be in charge,' George said huffily. ‘But that's all by the way. As I'd started to say earlier, I'm rather displeased that—'

‘Don't you want to know the other count on which you were wrong?' Virginia interrupted.

George sighed. ‘Very well. On what other count do I appear to be wrong, Sergeant?'

‘You're wrong about us being here to
report
to you,' Meade said. ‘We report to the Commissioners of Police as a matter of course, and to the governor if requested to do so.'

Elizabeth Holt looked down at her hands, as if she felt the conversation was taking rather an unpleasant turn.

Virginia, in contrast, released a positive roar of laughter and said, ‘That's put you in
your
place, George.'

‘I might remind you that I have some influence with the government in Albany, Sergeant Meade,' George said stiffly, reddening.

‘And so, I can well imagine, does Sergeant Meade's father,' Virginia countered.

What a cosy group they were, Blackstone thought – and how jolly their family meals must be.

‘Would it be all right with you if I now said what I have
already
attempted to say twice before?' George asked his sister-in-law.

‘Of course, my dear George,' Virginia said airily. ‘I wouldn't
dream
of stopping you.'

‘I am rather displeased that you have allowed Fanshawe, who was clearly involved in the kidnapping of my father, to escape the consequences of his actions,' George told the detectives.

‘Yes, I suppose you could call hanging himself “escaping the consequences of his actions”,' Blackstone said, to Virginia's obvious amusement. ‘Could I ask who employed him originally?'

‘He was engaged by my father, as all the servants were,' George said. ‘He came with excellent recommendations.'

Of course he did, Blackstone thought. When a man is forging his own recommendations, he very rarely resorts to modesty.

‘Does the name Ernest Hoddle mean anything to you, Mr Holt?' he asked.

George frowned. ‘No. Should it?'

‘Probably not,' Blackstone said. ‘We'll need you to give us a list of Fanshawe's friends and acquaintances.'

‘Friends and acquaintances?' George repeated.

Virginia laughed again. ‘It's something of a revelation to my brother-in-law that servants
have
friends and acquaintances. As far as he's concerned, they only really exist when they're serving him.'

‘Really, Virginia, must you?' the mouse-like Elizabeth asked, in squeaky defiance.

‘Yes, I must,' Virginia countered. ‘Speak the truth and shame the devil. That's my motto! Not that I'm suggesting – even for a moment – that there's anything diabolical about my dear brother-in-law.'

‘That's enough, Virginia,' Harold said quietly.

‘Oh, my lord and master has spoken, and I must, perforce, fall silent,' Virginia said.

She said the words with mock horror, but even so, fall silent was exactly what she did.

George cleared his throat again. ‘To return to your question, Inspector, I'm not sure Fanshawe
had
any friends. He hardly ever left the estate. He was devoted – he
seemed
devoted – to the service of my father.'

‘No friends and hardly ever left the estate,' Blackstone mused. ‘And yet he somehow seems to have established contact with a gang of vicious kidnappers who are probably based in New York City.'

‘Yes,' George conceded. ‘That
does
appear to have been the case.'

Assuming that Flynn was right, and Fanshawe and Hoddle
were
the same man, had that man been playing an
incredibly long
game? Blackstone wondered.

Could the former burglar of stately homes have been content to wait for
nine years
before committing his next criminal act?

No, that didn't seem at all likely.

So perhaps, before being contacted by the kidnappers, Fanshawe had been using Ocean Heights as a base from which to operate some entirely different criminal operation – though it was hard to imagine what the nature of that operation might be.

It was even possible, he supposed, that Fanshawe really
had
gone straight for those nine long years, and had only recently, after being contacted by the New York criminals, been tempted to return to his old ways.

But if he
had
been involved in the kidnapping, why had he stayed around once it had been pulled off?

Perhaps because the other members of the gang had
told him
to stay around, so he could watch the police investigation and gauge what progress it was making.

But then why, when he'd realized that the police were on to him, had he given no thought to escape – in which, the chances were, he would have succeeded – but had instead chosen to hang himself in the woods?

Thinking about this case wasn't just like banging your head against a brick wall . . .

‘Sam?' said a dreamy voice from somewhere in the ether.

 . . . it was like banging your head against a
series
of brick walls, none of which stayed in one place long enough for you to have any effect on it.

‘Sam?' said the voice again, and this time it seemed closer and much more immediate.

Blackstone glanced around him, and realized that Meade and the entire Holt family were looking at him expectantly.

‘Sorry,' he said, ‘I was just following a line of thought.'

George – to whom
any
thoughts seemed to be no more than distant acquaintances – allowed his lip to curl with disdain.

‘Following a line of thought,' he repeated. ‘And was it leading you anywhere interesting?'

Why don't you take a long walk along a short pier, you bastard! Blackstone wondered silently.

And aloud, he said, ‘We shall need to question the servants – especially the ones who worked mostly closely with Mr Fanshawe.'

‘That could be arranged. Shall we say – tomorrow morning?' George suggested.

‘Shall we say – now!' Blackstone countered.

‘Ah, but that would be rather difficult,' George told him.

‘And why might that be?'

‘Well, you see, the staff who worked closest with Fanshawe are what I believe you people in England call the
upstairs
staff – that is to say, the ones who have direct contact with the family.'

‘So?'

‘They are precisely the ones who will be most involved in the process of serving dinner, a process which, I need not remind you, has already been made difficult enough by the loss of our butler, and would be almost impossible if any other servants were withdrawn from it.'

‘You haven't, by any chance, forgotten that your father's been kidnapped, have you?' Blackstone said.

‘No, I haven't forgotten that. How could I?'

‘And it has occurred to you, hasn't it, that our questioning your servants could play an important part in our search for him?'

‘Of course.'

‘And yet you're content to leave questioning them until tomorrow?'

‘Look, Inspector, I do appreciate your difficulties,' George said, suddenly full of sweet reasonableness, ‘and, by the same token, I would expect you to appreciate ours. This has been a tragic day, I'll grant you that, but whatever has happened, the life of the house must go on as normal.'

‘Why?' Blackstone asked.

‘Because the routine of the house is of great importance. The staff expect things to run in a certain way, and would lose some of their respect for us if we allowed even Father's kidnapping to hamper that.'

‘So you're all slaves to your servants' expectations, are you?' Blackstone asked.

George scowled. ‘I would not put it in quite that manner, but suffice it to say that dinner must be served at the same time as it always is, in the same way as it always is.'

‘Besides,' Virginia said, ‘how
can
you question them, Mr Blackstone, when you'll be at dinner yourself?'

‘I'm not sure—' George began.

‘You
are
inviting Inspector Blackstone and Sergeant Meade to dinner, aren't you, my dear George?' Virginia asked.

‘They . . . they probably don't have their tuxedos with them,' George mumbled.

‘
Probably
don't? Since they came here to investigate the kidnapping, I'd be very surprised if they
did
have their tuxedos with them,' Virginia said.

They made a lot of assumptions in this family, Blackstone thought. They assumed, for example, that the kidnapping was the
only
crime that had occurred, and conveniently brushed to one side the fact that two men had been murdered. And they assumed – or, at least, Virginia did – that he was the sort of man who
could
produce a tuxedo, if he were only given enough advance warning.

‘I'm sure if you and Harold put the tuxedo problem in the hands of your valets, they'll be able to come up with a perfectly satisfactory solution, George,' Virginia said airily.

‘Besides, if they stay to dinner, how will they ever get back to New York tonight?' George asked, fighting an increasingly desperate rearguard action.

‘They don't
have to
get back to New York tonight, you silly boy,' the seemingly irrepressible Virginia said. ‘They can spend the night here.'

‘Here?' George repeated bleakly.

‘Here,' Virginia confirmed. ‘Just think how convenient that would be. If they stayed in Ocean Heights, they could be up bright and early, and have questioned all the servants before the rest of us had even risen.' She turned from her brother-in-law to Blackstone. ‘I can't believe you'd be cruel enough to deny us the pleasure of your company, so I'm absolutely confident that when I ask you dine with us – as a special favour to me – you'll have no choice but to say “yes”. You
will
say “yes”, won't you, Inspector?'

There were several advantages to agreeing to the proposal, Blackstone thought. The first was that he hadn't eaten since breakfast time, and was ravenously hungry. The second was that it made sense to stay at Ocean Heights rather than travel back to the city – and if they
were
staying, they might as well eat. Add to that the fact that spending more time with the family might throw up information useful to the case, and there were good solid grounds for staying.

But the
real
reason that he felt not the slightest hesitation in accepting the offer, he acknowledged to himself, was the look of horror on George Holt's face as he contemplated the possibility. It would do George good not to get his own way for once – and his obvious discomfort would only add an extra relish to whatever they were served.

‘We'd be delighted to stay to dinner,' he told Mrs Holt.

‘Oh, good!' Virginia said, clapping her hands together like a small child. ‘We'll have such
fun
!'

You might, Blackstone thought, but I doubt if, once it's over, the other members of your family will retain any fond memories of the evening.

ELEVEN

I
t was at the end of the meal that the two uniformed footmen, previously unseen, appeared in the doorway of the dining room.

‘Ah, your escorts have arrived!' Virginia Holt said to Meade and Blackstone. ‘And if you're wondering why there's two of them, it's because George doesn't want you wandering about the ancestral home – which isn't really ancestral at all, and bears very little resemblance to a home – without at least two pairs of eyes following every move you make.'

‘Really, Virginia, sometimes you go too far,' George said sullenly.

‘You mean, I
usually
go too far,' his sister-in-law replied. ‘It was only a joke,' she assured the detectives. ‘The reason you need a footman each is that, as chance would have it, your rooms are in different parts of the house.'

But there was no
chance
about it, Blackstone thought, as he followed the mute flunkey down a maze of corridors.

Alex Meade was one of the
Connecticut
Meades. He wore a tuxedo as if he had been born to it, and suitable accommodation would have been provided for him close to the family's bedrooms.

He, on the other hand, was one of the East End of London Blackstones, a far less distinguished line. When
he
had donned his borrowed tuxedo, it had
looked
as if it were borrowed, and when it came to the matter of selecting
his
sleeping accommodation, anything would do.