Miss Blood, you can go in now.’ The voice was flat, disinterested. The sound of chattering typewriters drowned out any answer.
The tall, young woman walked with over keen steps. Her dark, bobbed hair bounced in time at the edges of her face with metronome perfection. Everything about Charlotte Blood was synchronised.
The secretary gave her one knowing look and then dismissed her like all the other people she had cast off through that frosted door. Charlotte let her eyes travel along each painted letter in turn as she walked past. ‘Mr J H Fulman’, the dull gold announced. Editor-in-chief at The Comet. She took a deep breath and her mind pulled up a quick image of a replete fat man sitting back in a large chair – a full man. It was not too far from the truth.
The room smelt like the warm remains of a meal, a yeasty, salt aftertaste on the lazy air. He was a sweaty man, even then, in the grip of a brisk winter. There was always a fan going in his office, just recirculating his heavy breath and everything he said. He said a lot.
This man was made of words. He produced them on vast conveyor belts and breathed them out constantly like the great chimney on top of a factory. He sat behind the desk, spreading himself out along one whole side of it, a grey-skinned growth emerging from the wood. He was all layers – a mound of face, a roll of jowl drifting down to a bulging neck, then the turn of his chest slipping over the top of the enormous dome of his belly. He leaned back to accommodate it all. He was broad and undulating in the off-green shirt, his own land mass with rolling pastures and hills.
‘Blood.’ He said it like he could taste it.
‘Sir.’ She remained standing with her long arms held back and her chin pointed upwards, parade-ground ready. She squeezed her hands together so tight the knuckles stretched white.
He glanced up at her, already disappointed. There was a moment of assessment. Then he spoke as if he was delivering an unwelcome diagnosis, an unpleasant detail that had to be dealt with swiftly, surgically. ‘I need you to go to Dartmoor.’
‘Dartmoor?’ she frowned.
‘It’s a moor. In Devon.’
She didn’t flicker.
‘Hound of the Baskervilles? Sherlock Holmes?’ he offered slowly. ‘Never mind. Someone will point the way.’
‘I am aware of its location, sir.’
He stared at her before looking back to his desk, littered with random papers as if he’d just thrown them up in the air and let them land in a tickertape parade. He picked up one file. It curled at the edges and had enough different stains and fingerprints to imply this had passed through a lot of hands. He skimmed it a little way across the desk. ‘I want you to go to Ravenswick Abbey. You’re going undercover.’
Her face visibly lit. ‘In disguise?’
He drew his fleshy eyelids closer together until all that was left of his eyes were two black slits with furious eyebrows pushing them down. ‘I don’t want any of your hooey,’ he growled. ‘Charles Ravenswick was shot and killed almost a year ago on New Year’s Eve. No one’s been fingered for it yet.’
‘I know. I remember.’ She sounded scandalised. ‘So utterly awful.’
Fulman let his large head fall to the side and gave a doubtful look.
His strained breath whistled down his nose. This was a man for whom breathing didn’t seem to come naturally. ‘Listen, Blood, get down there and find out what’s going on.’
‘He was shot.’
‘Yes, but by who? That’s what I want you to discover.’ Fulman tapped his pen repeatedly.
‘Were the police called?’
‘Yes, the police were called, Blood! A man was killed. In a lift. No one could have got in or out. Lights went. It was someone in that lift but no one knows who did it.’
‘Aha! A locked lift mystery.’ She laughed a little before adding, ‘Or perhaps… if the crime is impossible to solve…’ She saw his unmoving face and cut it short.
Fulman paused and his thick, stony jaw fell to reveal the dark, wet inside of his mouth. He took another laboured breath.
‘Charles Ravenswick was the eldest son of Lord Ravenswick, who also happens to be the millionaire owner of The Sunday Review. They’re not touching it, of course. It could be the story of the year! And, what’s more, some strange things have started coming out of Ravenswick Abbey.’
‘Sounds just too odd.’
‘Blood, this is not one of your ridiculous escapades. If you can’t take this seriously…’
‘I can! I can!’ She felt the floor beneath the thin sole of her shoe. She knew how silly and frivolous she appeared to men like this. It was useful sometimes, but she could be serious alright if it was going to pay. ‘See!’ She gave him a studious look, fixing him with those forget-me-not eyes.
He looked bewildered for a moment, his face wrinkled with irritated confusion. ‘Blood, manuscripts and rare volumes have started appearing on the market from Ravenswick Abbey’s library and there’s a whisper that they are harbouring something very special indeed there. Nobody knew about most of these books. They thought they were either lost or mythical, or some such nonsense, but now they’re appearing with a distinct regularity. Lots of spiritual, ancient pseudo-religious texts… that kind of rubbish and drivel. You’ll know all about it. Anyway, there’s a man.’
‘A man?’
‘Yes, a man. Nicodemus Bligh.’ He pronounced the name as if he was introducing a notorious devil. ‘A mystic or shaman, something like that. He started out as Lady Ravenswick’s spiritual guide, but he’s been digging through the library, says he’s made these discoveries and there’s something mind-blowing to come. I want you to go and find out what’s going on at Ravenswick Abbey. Who shot Charles Ravenswick and what they’ve got in that library that’s so special. So, you’re going undercover –’
She took a thoughtful breath and looked pensive. ‘A librarian or ancient spiritual text expert…’
‘– as an ornithologist.’
Excerpt continues below cover reveal.
‘Right.’
He watched for a sign of recognition. ‘A bird watcher, Blood. Our parent group has a small publication – The Ornithologist’s Weekly, Monthly, whatever. You are going to be one of its journalists. No one reads it except sad, old men with too much time on their hands.’
‘Is it good?’
He closed his eyes slowly. ‘Blood.’ He ground out the word through clenched jaws.
‘I’m just forming a picture. What kind of tone am I aiming for? Academic journal or intrigued amateur? Am I specialising in exotic birds of paradise or common garden sparrows?’
‘Ravens.’ He nodded at the folder. ‘The family are very proud of their ravens and keep them in some sort of fabulous aviary. They wouldn’t usually let press anywhere near the place. They know the game too well. But they’ve agreed to let a bird expert in to interview the raven master. They love the bloody birds. It’s the one little crack in their wall and we’re in.’
‘I don’t know anything about birds. I’m not a bird expert.’
‘You just need to look like one.’
‘What does one look like?’
He paused, analysing her. ‘I don’t know, Blood. But these are your kind of people.’
‘My kind of people?’
‘Toffs.’
Her mouth tightened.
He raised one of those thick eyebrows, taunting her. ‘Nosferatu would definitely want to sniff around that mansion, wouldn’t she?’ His mouth spread into a vulgar smile.
She stiffened. ‘I suppose she might.’
‘Surely you don’t want to spend the rest of your life trawling nightclubs and bars sucking up gossip about rich people?’
She felt herself flush. Not many people outside this room knew the true identity of Nosferatu, The Comet’s salacious gossip columnist, but if they did, they certainly wouldn’t let Charlotte party with them anymore. Or maybe they would. There were definitely more than a few of her ‘friends’ who read the column with delighted horror, desperate to find out if their nightly antics had been included.
Charlotte consoled herself with the idea that she was just feeding on the appetite for scandal. Readers were desperate to know how the elusive upper classes spent their money, lavishing their exotic affections on one another in the riot of London parties and myriad country house week-ends, as they’d become known. And she was perfectly placed in their set to drain them of their secrets and lay the scandal bare for the public to feast on the next morning. Sometimes she even caught the scent of her victim’s enjoyment the next day when they read her column, not knowing the author was right in front of them. But Charlotte had no wish to go on with this grubby game forever. It barely paid the rent, for a start. She needed more, and here it was – death in a dirty folder. She could not waste this chance.
Fulman wiped a flabby hand down his greasy face. ‘This is serious, Blood. A man is dead and they’re not getting any closer to finding his killer. Rasputin’s taken over at the Abbey and they’re selling rare books like penny dreadfuls. I want you to get in there and find out what’s going on.’
She opened her mouth to speak but he held up his finger. Charlotte’s lips remained parted, waiting for the word to arrive. His eyes sharpened into the look of a man who could see the headlines being typed out in front of him. ‘This could be the scoop of the decade. This is real news, not inane back-page gossip. I wouldn’t usually let someone as flimsy as you –’
‘Flimsy? I covered the midnight treasure hunt round London!’
There wasn’t even a trace of acknowledgement on Fulman.
‘Chips Caruthers and Boy Jespers? Climbing Eros? Or perhaps Anteros.’
His frustration was growing. ‘Look, you’re not the kind of girl I’d usually want within a country mile of a big story but you can get close to these sort of monied people. You know them. Know their cut. This is a big opportunity for you Blood, to prove yourself. Make a name for yourself. A real name, not some sharp-toothed joke.’ He picked up a copy of a paper and, with a stubby finger, pointed to the Nosferatu column. ‘Time to break out of ‘who got slaughtered at the Embassy then raced a Rolls round London before making a splash at a pool party in Trafalgar Square’!’
‘Fruity Montague, and it was really the Kit-Cat but they threatened to sue.’
Fulman glared at her over the top of the paper, the finger still hovering mid-air. His face gathered in the middle, creating fresh folds. He nodded to the folder. ‘It’s all in there. Everything you need to know and a train ticket. They’re sending a driver for you at the other end.’
She leaned forward and inspected the folder before picking it up cautiously. ‘Sir, I…’
He threw down the newspaper. ‘Blood, do you want to make an impression here or not? This is a big story.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I’m not looking for thank-yous. I’m looking for answers. I’m looking for the scoop. The scoop, Blood! Do you understand? No one wants to hear about the Crash and misery anymore. It’s Christmas time. They want a good old-fashioned murder mystery. Ask Mrs Christie.’ He pointed at the front page of the rival newspaper showing the novelist in a cloche hat looking wistful. Below it was a picture of her latest offering, with a dancing couple all circled by red ribbon lettering on its cover.
‘Partners in Crime, sir. Like us.’
He looked appalled. ‘Get out and get me a story, Blood. I want the scoop. You hear me? The scoop.’
‘Yes, sir. You can count on it. The scoop.’
Before he could speak, she turned to go with a deliberate enthusiasm in her step that she hoped he noticed.
‘Oh, and Blood?’
She paused at the door. ‘Yes, sir?’
‘They’re all still there, the people from the lift.’
‘Yes, sir.’ She looked confused.
‘Well, that means there’s a murderer there, Blood.’
‘I thought that was the idea, sir. After all,’ she smiled, ‘it takes two to have a murder. One to die and one to –’
Fulman made a frustrated noise of defeat. ‘Just don’t end up dead.’ He flicked his hand dismissively. ‘It’s messy for the paper.’
‘Understood, sir.’
‘Now, get out.’
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