A Dark and Deadly Journey, page 1
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For Diana
ONE
November 20, 1940
I am not an easy woman to shock.
That is not arrogance, but rather mere statement of fact. After all, given that I spent my childhood raised in the bosom of sometimes bohemian, always decadent Parisian society and then, at the age of twenty-two, became a field agent for a government department investigating intelligence breaches during the war, there aren’t many things I haven’t encountered along the way. However, I can unequivocally and unashamedly say that when I found myself in possession of a safe deposit key and the address for its corresponding box written in invisible ink, I was stunned. The fact that it had been sent from Portugal—if the stamps on the envelope were to be believed—by my estranged father weeks earlier only added to my confusion.
I sparked my silver lighter and held the flame near enough to the seemingly blank paper to reveal Sir Reginald’s clandestine message.
London Safe Deposit Company
Lower Regent Street
Box 5297
I supposed that it was possible that my father had a safe deposit box in London. However, why, after nearly five years of silence, would he write to me about it—and in invisible ink no less? After all, as far as I knew, my formidable Aunt Amelia conducted all matters of business on her brother’s behalf. If he should send a key to anyone, surely it should be her.
I flicked the lid of the lighter closed and then opened my hand to look at the key I’d held since it slid out of the envelope into my palm. It glinted in the overhead light of the boardinghouse bedroom I shared with my best friend, Moira.
Well, I might be flummoxed as to why my father had sent me both the key and the address, but one thing was clear: I had every intention of going to the London Safe Deposit Company to find out what was inside box 5297.
I stuffed the key and the note back into their envelope and then dropped them into my handbag along with my lighter. Then I put on my hat, and out the door I went.
As I descended the stairs, I held my breath, hoping I wouldn’t come across one of my fellow boarders, who would inevitably fuss over the “cycling accident” I’d told them I’d been in when I’d returned to our Bina Gardens boardinghouse with a limp. Even three weeks on, I could still feel a faint tug where a doctor had recently removed the stitches from the gunshot wound I’d sustained while apprehending a killer who had dispatched two prominent men at Blackthorn Park, a secret government weapons facility. The fact that the traitor had managed to graze me at all had left me more than a little grumpy.
I hadn’t minded lying to most about how I’d ended up bandaged and with a temporary limp, but it had hurt to tell the tale to Moira—even more so when her usually serene expression pinched, lips tightened, and she stared at me a long moment before saying, “If you say so, Evie.”
My partner, David Poole, had warned me that life in the Special Investigations Unit could be a difficult one because the secretive nature of the job meant I wouldn’t be able to be truthful with the people I loved the most. I’d thought I understood the gravity of becoming an SIU field agent when I’d eagerly joined up two months ago, but I was beginning to learn how isolated an existence it could be.
At the bottom of the boardinghouse stairs, I paused to retrieve my coat from the hooks in the entryway when a key rattled in the lock and Moira opened the front door.
“Evie, fancy meeting you here,” she said in a cheerful tone.
“How did your audition go?” I asked.
She grinned, tossing her shoulder-length wheat-blond hair back. “I think the part is mine.”
“Moira!” I cried, throwing my arms around her.
“Don’t pop the champagne just yet,” she said with a laugh as she returned my embrace. “If I’ve learned anything in this business, it’s that nothing is a sure thing until the curtain rises.”
Moira had turned her back on the luxurious life of a society debutante in favor of her true love: acting. I knew her real ambition was Hollywood, and she was working hard for her big break, taking roles in every Ministry of Information film and West End play she could while supplementing her half of our rent with a healthy modeling career.
It was a misfortune that her last role, playing a debutante in a comedy of manners called Whoever Could Say?, had fallen through when the producer failed to pay his debts and his theater was foreclosed upon.
“I’m certain we’ll be seeing your name in lights soon enough,” I said. “Well, maybe not lights because of the blackout, but you know what I mean.”
“I do. Where are you off to?” she asked with a nod at my coat.
I hesitated. Moira more than anyone else would know how I felt about my father writing to me. After all, she’d been the first friend I made after he ripped me, still mourning my mother’s death, out of my life in Paris and dumped me in a British boarding school. However, the mysterious nature of his note held me back.
“I’m just going to make a telephone call.” I knew from years of living in boardinghouses—first in Edinburgh, where I’d gone to university, and then under Mrs. Jenkins’s roof—that they are not places where you can rely on privacy when you need it most.
My friend raised a brow. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone off the hall telephone because you’ve acquired a handsome officer you’re keeping from all of us.”
I snorted. “Hardly. I must telephone Aunt Amelia. She wants to know when I’m coming down to Shaldeen Grange to visit.” It was at least a partial truth. I was going to ring my aunt, and she always asked when I intended to visit her next.
“Ah, so there’s to be a negotiation,” said Moira. “Godspeed.”
I smiled as I pulled on my coat. “Thank you. I’ll see you for supper.”
I let myself out of the boardinghouse’s front door and made straight for the red box around the corner on Old Brompton Road.
A few moments after giving the switchboard operator the correct exchange, the voice of my aunt’s butler filled the line with a somber “Shaldeen Grange.”
“Good evening, Henderson. Is my aunt at home?” I asked.
“If you will wait one moment, please, Miss Redfern.”
I drummed my fingers against the little shelf in the telephone booth as I waited and watched people hurry by, bundled up in their coats and gloves. With the winter nearly upon us, darkness had fallen some time ago, but mercifully the air raid siren hadn’t yet sounded. No doubt all the men and women passing would be wondering what sort of a night the Germans would give us and what would be standing the next morning if bombs did fall on London.
“Evelyne, is that you?” Aunt Amelia’s voice pulled me back to the telephone booth.
“Yes, Aunt Amelia.”
“Is that charming man of yours with you?”
“Charming man? Do you mean David Poole?” I asked, wondering just what my partner would think if he heard my aunt refer to him as such.
“Yes, Mr. Poole. You really must bring him around again sometime. He can play the piano for me.”
“Aunt Amelia, he is neither my charming man nor a performing monkey,” I admonished. Clearly the decision to take David to my aunt’s home as part of our last case had been as unfortunate as it had been necessary.
“That is the sort of attitude that will make you decidedly Down in my books,” Aunt Amelia scolded.
I pinched the bridge of my nose hard and prayed to whichever god protected put-upon nieces for strength. I had neither the time nor the desire to examine my place in my aunt’s elaborate—and frankly incomprehensible—system of social ranking that declared people Up or Down based solely on her whim.
“I’m certain you’re busy, so I won’t take up too much of your time,” I began. “Has Sir Reginald ever mentioned holding a safe deposit box with the London Safe Deposit Company on Lower Regent Street?”
“Your father has always banked at C. Hoare & Co., just like our father and our grandfather.”
“Are you certain that he didn’t take a safe deposit box before going on his travels? Perhaps after Maman died,” I suggested.
Aunt Amelia hesitated. “After Geneviève died, there was nothing that merited being put in a safe deposit box. Your father sold everything. Did you never wonder where all your mother’s lovely things had gone?”
“Of course he did,” I said, rubbing at the sharp pang in my chest. I suppose I had known that, but I’d been young enough that no one had ever really laid out the truth so explicitly.
“I argued with Reginald that at least the jewels and the furs should be set aside for when you came of age. I had thought that you might like to wear some of your mother’s things during your debutante Season, if I could s
I felt for the bracelet of Maman’s watch through my coat sleeve.
“I should have realized,” I said.
“If I know my brother, he probably spent the lot of it on women, fast cars, and idiotic schemes that would land a less lucky man in an early grave. I’m very sorry, darling,” Aunt Amelia said, her tone softening, “but I suspect that if there ever was a safe deposit box, whatever was in it is long gone by now.”
Everything she said made sense. My father was nothing if not profligate and I could easily imagine money—or anything of value, really—slipping through his fingers years ago. But then why send me the key and the vault’s address now? And from Portugal for that matter.
“Why do you suddenly have all of these questions about a safe deposit box?” asked Aunt Amelia.
“Moira,” I lied automatically. “Or rather Moira’s mother. Apparently, Mrs. Mangan is trying to give Moira a few pieces of jewelry because she worries about the safe deposit vault being bombed.”
Aunt Amelia sniffed. “Well, if your friend does accept them, you can tell her that she can keep them in the safe here at Shaldeen Grange. That way they’ll be out of London.”
“That’s very kind of you, Aunt Amelia.”
“Does Miss Mangan still wish to be an actress?”
I smiled, genuinely touched that Aunt Amelia had remembered what I’d told her about Moira’s ambitions. “Yes. In fact, she had an audition today. She said it went well.”
“Then I hope Miss Mangan doesn’t accept her mother’s jewelry. Charity is a slippery slope for a girl trying to cling to her independence.”
“I shall remind her of that.”
“Do. I’m glad you rang, Evelyne. It’s good to hear your voice,” said my aunt.
My eyebrows jumped so high they probably brushed my fringe. “Really?”
“Of course!” she barked at me. “You are, as you are often quick to point out, my only niece.”
“Then I will ring more often,” I promised, finding I didn’t abhor the idea.
“Come to visit more often too,” she ordered, “and bring that Mr. Poole with you. Goodbye.”
The call cut off abruptly, leaving me staring at the receiver in my hand. I shook my head with a laugh and then reached into my handbag for more shillings.
This time, when the switchboard picked up, I asked for the London Safe Deposit Company. However, the line rang and rang until the operator came back on and asked if I wanted to continue trying.
“No, thank you,” I said, “I suspect they’re closed for the evening.”
I hung up the receiver and then pushed out of the telephone booth to make my way back to Bina Gardens. The vault might be closed for the day, but the following morning I would be there as soon as the doors opened.
TWO
At ten o’clock on the dot the following morning, I walked up to the solid edifice that was home to the London Safe Deposit Company and pushed through the heavy front door.
At the front counter, a balding clerk wearing a gray suit with a faint pinstripe and a pair of steel-rimmed glasses looked up from the ledger he was writing in. “Good morning, Miss. How may I help you?”
“I’d like to request a box, please,” I said.
“Very good, Miss…”
“Redfern.”
“May I please have the box number, Miss Redfern?”
“Five-two-nine-seven,” I recited.
As he jotted this down, he asked, “Do you have the key?”
I opened my handbag and took out the envelope, shaking it until the key fell out into my hand.
“Excellent,” he said, his smile growing a fraction of an inch wider. “If you would care to follow me, Miss Redfern. We have a private lounge where you may wait for the box to be retrieved.”
I slipped my handbag back over my wrist and followed him through a set of doors and down a corridor. He opened a door for me and led me into a well-appointed room done in oak with dark brown leather and hunter-green velvet furniture. It resembled a small drawing room save for a square table placed against the right wall.
“Someone will be with you in just one moment,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said before settling myself on the sofa and pulling out a copy of The Postman Always Rings Twice. The James M. Cain novel was not my normal reading material, and I likely would have passed over it in a bookshop for being too hard-boiled. However, I’d become curious after seeing it in David’s car while investigating at Blackthorn Park. I’d asked Moira to slip a copy into a suitcase she’d packed me with additional clothes for an extended stay in the village while investigating the case, and it was only upon returning to London that I’d found my father’s letter slipped between the book’s pages.
When I’d finally begun reading the book after speaking to Aunt Amelia the previous evening, I’d been fascinated to discover that The Postman Always Rings Twice was not a detective novel as such but instead a thriller. It followed the story of a man who falls in love with the wife of a diner owner in California. They’d just concocted a plot to murder her husband, but I had a sneaking suspicion that everything was about to go horribly wrong, as it often does in books.
Despite my preference for the likes of Christie, Sayers, Marsh, and Berkeley, I found Mr. Cain’s book tense and tautly written, and I wanted very much to know what happened next.
Not that I would ever tell David that.
I managed to read several pages by the time the door of the safe deposit company’s lounge opened again and the same clerk who’d greeted me entered, followed by a strapping man carrying a metal box.
“Here you are, Miss Redfern,” said the clerk as his helper deposited the box on the square table with a thunk.
“Thank you,” I said.
“We also received a letter from Sir Reginald asking that this envelope be kept with the box,” said the clerk, placing a buff envelope on top of the box. “We could not open the box and add it to the contents, but I can assure you that it has been kept safe.”
Then the clerk gestured to a small bell set into the wall that I hadn’t noticed before. “If you have any questions, you need simply ring. No one will disturb you otherwise.”
“Thank you,” I said.
When I was alone again, I replaced the ribbon I was using to mark my place in the book and then rose. I reached for the letter first, sliding my finger under the flap to tear it open.
Evelyne,
Inside this box, there is a small tea chest. Take it to a shop on Hatton Garden called H. M. Barlow and ask for a Mr. Morrison.
Do not open the chest.
It is vitally important that you do as you are told and follow my instructions to the letter.
Sincerely,
R.
I scoffed. “As though I was ever going to listen to an order from you.”
I fished the key from my handbag and slipped it into the lock of the safe deposit box. I’m not entirely certain that I believed it would fit until that very moment, but it turned without resistance.
I opened the lid and discovered that, sure enough, there was a small tea chest inside. I lifted it out, surprised at how heavy it was, and set it on the table. It was unremarkable except for a small iron lock latching the lid to the front panel of the chest.
I rummaged around in my handbag until I found my lock-picking kit. A few months ago, I never would have dreamed I would be walking around London with such tools on me, but since I’d joined the SIU and been trained with some of the best Special Operations Executive agents in the war, I’d found myself relying on my tension wrench and hook more and more.
The lock was simple, and it took very little work to coax the mechanism to spring open. With a satisfied smile, I lifted the chest’s lid and gasped.
It was stuffed full of jewelry. Necklaces of geographic art deco designs wrapped around dangling diamond earrings I knew had once glinted under chandeliers. Rings sparkled in the lounge’s yellow artificial light—aquamarines and emeralds and amethysts all set in gold. A golden peacock with sapphires and emeralds studding its tail feathers and a brilliant ruby for an eye nestled next to a stack of diamond-encrusted bangles.
However, it wasn’t the value of the exquisitely crafted pieces that took my breath away. It was whom they had once belonged to.
