The Deadly Embrace (10 page)

In her mind’s eye, she could see the image of her father in his study at home, poring over his well-thumbed copy of Caro’s
Shulchan Arukh.
He was so very different from other rabbis she had met growing up, men with egos worthy of Moses who were convinced that they stood at the right hand of God. Her father was just the opposite—thin, rumpled, and bookish. With his metal-rimmed spectacles and tangled gray hair, he looked exactly like the scholar he was.

“My father is more of a teacher … an interpreter of the most complex questions and traditions of Jewish law.”

“Traditions of faith?”

“No,” she said. “Not of faith in the sense of Christianity. Jews don’t believe that this life leads anywhere. Essentially, they believe that virtue is its own reward.”

“What about heaven?” he asked.

“There is no heaven or hell. Every Jew is made to feel responsible for his own actions and life decisions. He has only one chance to make a difference, and that is here on earth in his or her own lifetime,” she said.

“So what happens when you die? Nothing?”

“If you’re a believer, then your spirit lives on through your children, or in the legacy of what you have accomplished, or in the fact that people remember you and what kind of person you were.”

“I prefer eternal paradise,” said Taggart.

She smiled and said, “Well, I hope you get there, Major.”

“Sam,” he said.

“Sam,” she repeated, sipping another cup of tea.

“I gather you separate yourself from your father’s religion,” he said.

“Well, let’s just say I don’t practice it,” she said.

“Why not?” asked Taggart, lighting another cigarette.

“I guess I question things too much. Mostly, I question the existence of an all-seeing, benevolent God. How could a just God stand by while someone like Hitler unleashes the greatest suffering in the history of the world?” she asked.

“Yeah … and, according to the Jewish religion, Hitler faces no penalty beyond the grave, right?” asked Taggart.

“Aside from the belief that evil diminishes the evildoer, no,” she said softly.

“So what do you think?” asked Taggart.

“I hope he burns in hell,” said Liza.

CHAPTER 9

T
he rain had finally stopped shortly before dawn. Standing in the darkness, Taggart pulled the scrap of notepaper out of his trench-coat pocket and rechecked the address. It matched the elegant brick apartment house across the street, in the center of Belgravia’s Hamilton Row. An apartment in the building was far beyond the means of a Wren lieutenant, but well within the family expectations of Lady Jocelyn Dunbar.

Liza had learned from a co-worker that Joss lived on the top floor. Taggart glanced up at the apartment. The windows were dark and the blackout curtains weren’t drawn. He decided to try the building’s front entrance first. It was always possible that Colonel Gaines had not yet sent a team to search the apartment.

When he walked across the street, an old man in a royal-blue porter’s jacket was standing in the darkness in front of the vestibule, smoking a cigarette. Taggart flashed his identity card and said, “Military Security Command … I’m here to check Lady Dunbar’s apartment.”

The old man dropped his cigarette stub and crushed it with a scuffed boot. When Taggart offered him another one from his open pack of Luckies, his wrinkled face lit up in pleasure.

“The Metropolitan Police have come and gone already,” he said, tucking it behind his left ear. “They left a bloody lock on her flat that belongs in the Tower of London.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Taggart. “Well, good night, then.”

Taggart sauntered back down the sidewalk. When he turned again, the porter was disappearing inside the dark vestibule. He waited in the shadows to make sure the street was empty before slipping down the narrow, brick-lined alley that separated Joss Dunbar’s apartment house from its stately neighbor.

It was pitch-black in the narrow passageway. He could smell bread baking in one of the buildings. Removing his flashlight, he pointed it ahead of him on the cobblestone path until he turned the corner and came to the rear entrance.

Three overflowing garbage containers stood along the wall next to it. As he stepped toward the door, an orange cat leapt from inside of one of the receptacles, tipping it over with a noisy crash. Taggart switched off the flashlight and stood silently in the darkness, waiting to see if someone came to investigate. Except for a bus chugging by on the next street, he could hear no sound of movement.

Taggart turned the flashlight back on and focused it on the small glass panel in the rear entrance door. It was secured from the inside by a stout metal bar. Continuing along the rear wall, he came to an iron fire-escape ladder bolted to the façade in the far corner. The lowest rung was only four feet above the cobblestones. In New York, it would have been an invitation to plunder. Londoners were a more trusting people, he concluded, at least until the Americans had arrived.

He began to climb up into the darkness. At the second floor, a wood-sash window revealed itself in the darkness less than a foot away from the ladder. Looking up, he saw that there was an identically spaced window on each of the next two floors.

The smell of baking bread grew stronger as he passed an open window on the third floor. Reaching the underside of the slate roof, he switched on the flashlight just long enough to see that Joss Dunbar’s window was securely locked. He pulled out his pocketknife, inserted the blade between the two sashes, and tried to force open the fastener. It refused to budge.

He waited in the darkness for the sound of several vehicles passing by in the next street before using the butt of the knife to smash the small windowpane above the fastener. When he had unlocked it, he carefully removed the broken shards of glass and put them in his coat pocket. Then, raising the bottom sash, he went through the dark opening headfirst.

He found himself in the kitchen. As he knelt on the floor, Taggart could hear the regular tap-tap-tap of water as it dripped into the kitchen sink. An upright refrigerator hummed against the far wall. In the murky darkness, he could make out a door at the other end of the room.

After closing the kitchen blackout curtain, he switched on his flashlight again and went to the door, slowly turned the knob, and swung it open. The narrow beam revealed the edge of a thick Persian rug, then the arm of an elegant sofa and a matching side chair.

Taggart thought he smelled licorice. A moment later, the cone of someone else’s flashlight pinned him in its beam, and he heard a low, guttural laugh.

“I’ve been sitting here salivating over the smell of that baking bread for almost an hour,” came the voice of Inspector Drummond from a comfortable armchair in the corner. “In another five minutes, I was going to head home for breakfast.”

“Sorry to take so long,” said Taggart. “Who were you expecting?”

“A murderer, perhaps.”

“Well, that’s progress,” said Taggart. “Scotland Yard actually believes a murder might have taken place. If I’d known that, I would have just asked for the key.”

“I assume you’ve come to search the flat,” said Drummond, sucking on his licorice.

“Yeah … before Gaines destroyed all the evidence that exists in the case.”

“You don’t have to roast that chestnut anymore. He now agrees there was foul play.”

“With your help, I assume.”

The old man nodded and said, “If there is a murderer preying on young women in this city, he just doesn’t want it to be a member of the royal family.”

“No one is off limits to me,” said Taggart.

“I told him that you were the hard-boiled type,” said Drummond. “Now, why don’t you close the rest of those blackout curtains so I can turn on the lights and we can go through the flat together—that is, unless you would like me to just sit here and watch the great American detective at work.”

When Taggart drew the curtains in the living room, Drummond switched on the floor lamp sitting next to his chair.

“Where would you normally begin?” asked Taggart.

“When the victim is a woman, I always start in the kitchen,” said Drummond, struggling to climb out of the chair. “So many good hiding places … sugar, cornstarch, flour, and so forth. Perhaps I’ll write a monograph about it someday.”

“Yeah, well, send me a copy,” said Taggart, heading into the bathroom.

“Why the loo?” asked Drummond.

“For a young woman, it’s the place of intrigue,” said Taggart, surveying the interior. The window above the claw-footed enamel tub was covered with a fitted piece of painted wood instead of a blackout curtain. A small clothes hamper stood next to a large painted washstand. There was a medicine chest behind the mirror over the sink.

“For me, it’s the most useful indicator of how she lived, the extent of her personal needs, what medications she was taking … the place where she created a new personality each morning in front of the mirror … all the idiosyncrasies.”

“Fascinating,” said Drummond with a hint of sarcasm.

Taggart removed the top of the toilet tank and peered inside. There was nothing in it but brackish water. He searched the back of the tank in case something might have been taped to the polished enamel surface. There was nothing there either. The bathtub was immaculate, with no hair strands, soap residue, or any other evidence of recent use.

Taggart went through the drawers of the painted washstand. They held towels, washcloths, toilet paper, soap, and a powdered cleaning product. After turning each object over, he waited for Drummond to step aside so he could search the sink area and the medicine chest.

“You’re big—even for an American,” said Drummond, leaning away from him.

The cavity under the sink yielded nothing, and the contents of the medicine chest seemed to put the final lie to Taggart’s thesis. A new razor sat on the top shelf. It was still in its original packing container. Aside from a single tube of lipstick, there was no makeup of any kind on the three glass shelves. The only medication was a small paper roll of a popular stomach antacid.

“So what would you conclude about Lady Dunbar’s little idiosyncrasies here in her secret lair, Mr. Hammett?” asked Drummond smugly.

“Obviously, she didn’t spend a lot of time here,” said Taggart testily. “Why don’t you show me the kitchen, Bulldog?”

In the kitchen, Drummond turned on the overhead light. The small enamel sink was as immaculate as the bathtub. The refrigerator and ice chest held nothing but an empty ice-cube tray.

He watched Drummond go down on his knees with the flashlight to examine the base storage cupboards on either side of the sink. In one of them, he found a water glass and a broken china cup. From another, he pulled out a dusty mixing bowl and two settings of sterling-silver flatware. Only an empty wastebasket occupied the space directly under the sink.

“Maybe she hid everything in the cornstarch,” said Taggart.

“Ahhh,” replied Drummond, opening one of the cupboards above the counter.

A jar of raspberry jam sat on the bottom shelf, next to metal canisters of tea, salt, and baking soda. Two paper sacks appeared to contain sugar and flour. On the top shelf, an intricate spider’s web connected two bottles of Napoleon brandy. One bottle was unopened, the other half full.

Drummond removed a folded newspaper from his side pocket and spread it out on the counter. Then he picked up the flour sack, poured the contents onto the newspaper, and began sifting through them with his fountain pen. Finding nothing but flour, he refolded the newspaper and carefully emptied the powder back into its sack. He checked the contents of the other containers with the same result.

“So much for the kitchen,” he said, wearily.

Together, they headed into the apartment’s sole bedroom. The canopied double bed was crowned by a carved walnut frame, which was bordered with crocheted lace. They stripped the bed, lifting the mattress to examine its lining as well as the box spring underneath it.

The Chippendale chest of drawers next to the bed held sensible cotton undergarments, socks, and handkerchiefs. After examining every article, Drummond removed each drawer and turned it over, just as Taggart had done in the bathroom.

“Odd—she has no jewelry,” said Drummond.

“Either she didn’t like the stuff, or else she didn’t keep it here,” said Taggart, without mentioning Joss Dunbar’s missing locket.

The last place in the bedroom to be searched was the large walk-in closet. An assortment of fine women’s clothing hung from one of the two closet poles, dresses and ensembles for every season. On the other side of the closet, three large full-length garment bags hung from the second pole. The shoe rack underneath the bags held women’s dress shoes. Most of them looked new.

“Formal gowns … the kinds of things she would have worn to Buckingham Palace,” said Drummond as he went through the first garment bag. “Also prewar, from the look of them.”

While Drummond continued searching each garment, Taggart ran his flashlight over every inch of the walls, and flooring in the closet and bedroom, just as he had in the other rooms they had searched. Ten minutes later, Drummond came out of the closet, shaking his head in frustration.

“Nothing,” he muttered.

Back in the living room, they spent another thirty minutes examining the furniture, rugs, walls, and flooring. Wheezing from exertion, Drummond dropped into one of the easy chairs as Taggart went into the kitchen and retrieved the open bottle of brandy and a water glass. He poured a generous helping of brandy into it and offered the glass to Drummond.

“You’re not drinking, Major?” asked the Englishman before taking his first swallow.

“There was only one glass,” said Taggart with a taut grin.

“Reformed?” asked Drummond knowingly.

Taggart nodded. “I wish I could stay that way,” he said. “My wife died last year.”

“Always something, isn’t it,” said Drummond. “Well, I’m afraid you’re right about this place, Major. Apparently, she spent very little time here.”

“Then the obvious question is this,” said Taggart. “Where did she spend her time when she wasn’t on duty?”