A Dark and Deadly Journey, page 15
I needed to tell David what I’d learned, Mr. Fletcher’s warning be damned. David was my partner and he had a right to know that the case of a missing informant had just become more complicated than either of us could ever have anticipated.
But first, I wanted to follow the thread of Jessup’s trunk calls while I had the chance.
The basement had little of the glamour of the more public spaces like the lobby and the hotel bar, trading soaring ceilings for cramped corridors painted in functional white. These were the sorts of spaces guests were never meant to give a thought to if a hotel was well-run, and I suspected it was only my story about being worried about Jessup’s whereabouts that bought me access.
Martim stopped in front of a door with Mesa telefônica stenciled on it in blue paint. When he opened the door, I was hit by the sound of a half dozen women’s voices speaking in rapid Portuguese, English, French, and German. Just beyond the door, I could see an older woman lift her head and frown as she connected a call and then removed her headphones.
“Não permitimos convidados aqui, Martim,” the woman said in a sharp tone, her expression pinched.
Martim glanced back at me and, in English, said, “Angelo asked me to bring Menina…”
“Moore,” I supplied.
“Menina Moore here,” finished Martim.
“I’m very sorry to be a bother,” I said, doing my best to play the role of the polite English secretary I was supposed to be, “but I’m trying to find a friend who was a guest here at the Hotel Metrópol. It really is urgent that I locate him, and Angelo thought that you might help.”
The woman assessed me with a cool eye that told me she was no more impressed with my somber suit and prim blouse than I was. “Why do you think I might be able to help?”
“You or one of your switchboard operators. He placed a trunk call to London. I was hoping I might find out who the call was to.”
The woman sighed and reached for a book that sat next to her right hand. “What is your friend’s name?”
“Michael Jessup. I believe the call would have been on the thirty-first of October at five o’clock in the afternoon,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed. “You seem to know a great deal about this call already.”
“Angelo was very helpful,” I demurred.
She made a low noise in her throat and flipped open her book to page through it. She stopped and took a moment to read through an entry before saying, “Senhor Jessup booked a trunk call to London, exchange SWI 7832, on that date.”
SWI 7832? The exchange didn’t ring any bells.
“Who arranged the call?” I asked.
“Luiza Barbosa.”
“May I speak with her?” I asked.
The head of the switchboard glanced at her watch. “She is supposed to have a break now. If she wants to speak to you, you can speak to her for ten minutes. Menina Barbosa!”
From around the other side of the switchboard, a woman with abundant dark hair, beautifully smooth olive skin, a round face, and a red pout poked her head. The head of the switchboard gave her a series of instructions in Portuguese, and I watched as her gaze flicked to me, hardened, and then turned back to her superior.
“Menina Barbosa will speak to you,” said the switchboard’s head.
“What does she want?” Menina Barbosa asked sourly in English.
“Menina Moore will ask you herself,” said her superior. “Menina Moore, if you will follow her.”
“Obrigada, Menina Barbosa,” I said as I fell into Luiza’s wake as she breezed by me, the yellow skirt of her dress swishing about her silk-stocking-clad legs. Even with my long stride, I had to scramble to keep up with her.
“I do not like how the English say ‘Barbosa.’” She sniffed, not bothering to look over her shoulder as she addressed me.
“I apologize,” I said.
“Call me Luiza.”
“Thank you for being willing to speak to me, Luiza—”
She gave a short laugh. “I don’t like that either.”
“I just had a few questions—”
“I will only answer what I know,” she said, pushing out of a side entrance door and into the decidedly less glamorous back of the hotel property. The clang of pots and pans from a nearby doorway told me that this was the service entrance to the kitchen, a fact confirmed by the stacks of boxes filled with produce waiting to be brought in and the empty packing crates haphazardly stacked for when someone would come along and break them down for the rubbish.
Luiza fished out a packet of cigarettes from her handbag, lit a match, and took a deep draw. She blew out the smoke in a steady stream, her free hand planted on the curve of her hip in a way that gave her a weary look.
“What do you want?” asked Luiza.
“I’m looking for a man named Michael Jessup. He was a guest at this hotel,” I said.
She flicked the end of her cigarette dismissively. “Senhor Jessup? Yes, I remember him.”
“He seems to have disappeared, and it’s rather urgent I find him,” I said, holding back the fact of his murder for fear it might make her even more reluctant to speak to me.
Her eyes raked over me before she took another draw on her cigarette. “What do you want to know?”
“Angelo in the bar told me that Mr. Jessup often waited in the bar for a telephone call when he was staying at the Hotel Metrópol. Do you know who was calling him?” I asked.
She crossed her arms under her chest. “I only took the telephone calls and directed them to the bar’s telephone, where one of the waiters would fetch Senhor Jessup.”
“Surely you must hear the caller from time to time, even if it’s just as you are making sure the connection is clear.”
“Rarely,” she said with a smirk.
“Then you couldn’t tell me whether he was speaking to a man or a woman?” I asked.
“No,” she said shortly, lifting her cigarette to her lips again.
“Angelo said that Mr. Jessup was in the habit of booking a trunk call the night before he left Lisbon on every visit, is that right?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“But he also booked a trunk call to London on the thirty-first of October, which wasn’t his habit because he stayed on for several days afterward,” I said.
“Yes,” she repeated.
“Who was the trunk call on the thirty-first of October to?”
She threw her hands up in the air. “I book the calls that I’m told to book. He gave me the same telephone exchange that he always gave me, but with much less notice. It ruined my afternoon trying to make sure his trunk call was arranged.”
“He wanted to place a call to SWI 7832?” I asked. “The same place he always rang just before he left?’
“Yes. He called it every time he was staying at the hotel, usually just before he left. That is fine because we know he always wants a call the night before he leaves. But this time he said it was urgent.”
“Did he say why?” I asked.
“Guests do not share why anything is urgent. All I can tell you is he wanted two trunk calls during that stay. One on the thirty-first and one on the fifth, the day before he checked out of the hotel.” She threw her cigarette down and ground it under the toe of her black leather heel. “I must return to my place.”
I watched her march back into the building, leaving me among the rubbish of the alleyway.
TWENTY-FOUR
I gave Luiza a few minutes’ head start and then doubled back through the service door to retrace my steps past the switchboard room until I reached the door Martim had originally directed me through. When I caught Angelo’s eye across the bar, I raised a hand to the waiter in thanks and headed for the lobby once again.
As promised, David was lingering at the sofas where we’d interviewed Fortescue. As I approached, he folded his hands behind his back and asked, “Where are you coming from?”
“The switchboard room. I went there after the bar because I discovered something,” I said, and I related the story of what I’d found—with the parts surrounding my father omitted because I knew I should save those for a more private place. When I reached the news of the telephone exchange, David frowned.
“That’s a London exchange,” he said.
“Which makes me wonder why Jessup was telephoning a London exchange every time he stayed at the Hotel Metrópol when the next day he would be flying back to London?”
“Telling his wife about his plans to come home?” he asked.
“That would be a very expensive habit. Besides, if he did have a wife, why telephone her when it would have been far less expensive and faster to send a telegram?”
“Telephoning his employer?” David asked.
I shook my head. “Again, why waste the expense of telling your employer you are returning when the dates of your trip are already planned?”
“Well, it sounds as though you had a more successful time of it than I did. The hotel manager was not particularly helpful. He can’t remember whether Jessup and Fortescue ever met,” said David.
“Angelo in the bar couldn’t remember either, but that doesn’t rule out the possibility that it happened.” I stopped myself. “David, there’s something I need to discuss with you.”
He glanced at his watch. “Can it wait? I need to report, and I thought I’d wire Miss Summers to see about that telephone exchange.”
I shook my head. I’d waited long enough already. “I need to speak to you now. Somewhere private.”
“But our hotel—”
“Now,” I insisted.
“Right,” he said, standing up. “I have an idea.”
David led me through the hotel, walking with purpose as though he not only knew the place but belonged. As we left the buzz of the lobby behind, things became quieter. We wound down several hallways until we saw a bank of doors.
“See if any of them are open and free,” he said, trying one handle.
I tried the door across from him. It gave, and I found myself looking at a dark room half filled with tables and chairs.
“This one,” I said, flicking on the light.
David followed me in and, when the door closed behind us, asked, “What’s the matter?”
I looked down at my hands. I could hear Mr. Fletcher’s warning to keep my search for Sir Reginald to myself, but that had been before I’d learned that Jessup and Sir Reginald had definitely met. Before I knew that Morrison had been shot and killed.
My father was connected to too many dead men to keep things from David any longer.
I drew in a deep breath and started at the beginning. “Before I left London, I received an envelope in the post. Inside was a key and an address written in invisible ink.”
“You can’t be serious,” he said with a laugh.
“Unfortunately, I am.”
“Who would send you a key?” he asked.
“My father.”
“But I thought you don’t speak,” he said.
“We don’t,” I said with a nod. “The address led me to a safe deposit box and a tea chest of my mother’s jewels I’d thought had been sold off a long time ago. There was also a letter with instructions that I was to take the box to a Hatton Garden jeweler named Christian Morrison. When I arrived, I found a ransacked shop and no Morrison. I learned this morning that he was shot and killed. His body was found in an air raid shelter.”
“That was the telegram you received at breakfast?” asked David.
I nodded. “Miss Summers let me know.”
“Do Mr. Fletcher and Mrs. White know about this?”
“Mr. Fletcher does. Mrs. White does not,” I said. “If she did, she would never have agreed to send me on assignment with you.”
“Why? You couldn’t have known about the connection between your father and a murdered jeweler,” he said.
“Sir Reginald is here in Lisbon—or at least he was until he disappeared.”
He stilled. “Disappeared?”
“Carter had been keeping an eye on him, but Sir Reginald vanished.”
“Why has Carter been monitoring him?”
I looked down at my hands, knowing just how poorly I would take the news that David had withheld anything about an assignment from me if our roles were reversed.
“The intelligence services are assessing Sir Reginald as a potential asset to influence significant figures in neutral countries because of the company he keeps. However, there has been some resistance to the idea. Mr. Fletcher thought I might be able to speak to Sir Reginald and persuade him to become an asset.”
“Why don’t I know about this?”
I sighed. “Because I was given instructions not to tell you. It wasn’t until I met with Carter while you were reporting to Mrs. White yesterday that I learned of Sir Reginald’s vanishing act.”
David stared at me. “Is there anything else you neglected to tell me?”
I winced. “Do you remember when I told you that Princess Petrova recognized me as Sir Reginald’s daughter when she met me at the casino? She also told me that Sir Reginald had approached her for help. She said she believed it had to do with money. She had planned to effect an introduction between Sir Reginald and Winn, however, the day after my father asked for the favor, he rang her and told her it was no longer necessary.”
“Your father was in contact with the very man we are looking for and you thought it wise to hold that back from me?” David asked, his voice shaking a little as I suspected he was holding back his anger.
“He never spoke to Winn so I thought it wouldn’t matter,” I said quickly.
“No, you hoped it would not matter. You had no right to make that decision on your own, Evelyne.”
“I will have you know that I am fully capable of making my own decisions—”
“We are partners,” he snapped. “We are meant to be working together. We have to tell Mrs. White.”
“No.”
“Evelyne, be reasonable. You have gone on an assignment in a foreign country without disclosing a huge conflict of interest to your handler. What happens if we realize that your father really is involved and you must make a difficult decision about what to do? You could jeopardize the entire investigation.”
There it was, the crossroads that Mr. Fletcher had warned me about. If David was asked to choose between loyalty to me and loyalty to the job, the department, and the country, he would choose them every time.
“Mr. Fletcher knows,” I said stubbornly.
“Mr. Fletcher is not your handler.”
“But he is our head of department.”
“No one is infallible. Not even a head of department. If Phillips were to find out about this—”
“He would demand that I was removed, just like Mrs. White. But I can’t be, David. Not when we have just had our first real break connecting Jessup and Winn,” I said.
“I should be picking up the telephone right now and making arrangements for you to be on the first flight back to Whitchurch.”
“Please don’t do that,” I said. “Please.”
“You lied to me.” The fact that he sounded more hurt than angry cut me to the core.
“I was given an assignment and told expressly that I should not disclose it to you unless absolutely necessary.”
“You lied,” he repeated.
“The moment I realized the extent of the connection between Winn, Jessup, and Sir Reginald, I resolved to tell you. I just couldn’t do it in the middle of the Hotel Metrópol’s lobby,” I said.
“You said Jessup. How does Jessup factor into this?” he asked.
“At the Hotel Metrópol’s bar, I found out that Jessup and Sir Reginald met around the same time Sir Reginald approached the princess. I think that Jessup might have offered my father some sort of deal that made him turn away from Winn.”
“Do you think Winn killed Jessup?” asked David.
“No,” I said quickly. “If Winn was on that aeroplane, Phillips would have spotted his name.”
“Not if Winn was traveling under false papers.”
“It still doesn’t fit. Why would Winn go missing for days before Jessup’s trip only to risk leaving Portugal and returning on a flight from Britain to kill him? Besides, Winn sounds like he liked to keep a low profile. The plane was so crowded that if something went wrong while he was breaking Jessup’s neck, we all would have heard it and he would have been trapped on that aeroplane. No, I think Winn was somehow in competition with Jessup, but I don’t think he is our killer.”
“Could Sir Reginald be our killer?” asked David.
“Why would Sir Reginald kill a man who was supposed to be helping him out of trouble? Besides, if my father had been a passenger, I would have recognized him.”
“Are you certain?” he asked. “You said yourself that you haven’t seen him in years.”
“Mr. Fletcher showed me a series of recent press photographs. Sir Reginald looks much the same as he always did.”
I hated the guarded look in my partner’s eyes as he studied me, almost as though he didn’t know whether he could trust me any longer.
“I am sorry, David,” I said. “I promise I only trusted the seriousness of the connection between Winn, Jessup, and Sir Reginald when I spoke to the head waiter at the bar.”
“And Princess Petrova’s offer to introduce Sir Reginald and Winn?” he asked.
My shoulders sagged. “I had a lapse in judgment. I can understand why you might be skeptical, but I promise you I never would have held back from you the fact that Sir Reginald is in Lisbon if it had been up to me.” I leaned over and put my hand on his. “You are my partner.”
He stared at our hands for a moment before covering mine with his free one. Then he took a step back.
“Where does that leave us?” asked David.
“I don’t know,” I said, not entirely certain whether he was referring to the case or to our partnership.
“I can go to Phillips’s office and send a wire to Miss Summers asking her to look into the telephone exchange you found,” he said stiffly.
“That’s a good idea,” I conceded.
