"In all the years I"ve known you," Fizzy continued, "you"ve always worn wide-brimmed hats, Gloria, but the one thing they need that a cloche doesn"t is a hat pin."
Not an ice pick.
Louis Boucard was killed with a hat pin.
"And when the wind took yours down the street, I knew."
As did Teddy Hardcastle.
She drew a deep, shuddering breath. "I presume it was because of your affair?"
Gloria swallowed. "I went in to that with my eyes wide open, darling, because whatever other faults Louis might have had, he . . . well, let"s just say he didn"t have them in the bedroom department."
Fizzy felt it best to let that one pa.s.s.
"But he used you as a subject?"
That was his great "Revelation" and what greater dynamite for an advertising campaign than the wife of a respected politician on public display?
"Like the press said, he only ever paints nudes," Gloria said ruefully. "But the treachery is that he painted me while I slept. I hadn"t an inkling until he started blackmailing me he was always in arrears with the bookies."
"He wanted more, I suppose?"
"No."
Gloria fixed her perpetually sad eyes on her friend.
"Orville"s positively swimming in lolly and quite frankly the amount I was paying Louis, Orville didn"t even notice. Another frock, another hat he didn"t question it. No, the trouble started once people began to appreciate the genius of Louis"s work. You see, the two things my lover wanted most in life were to be rich and famous, and that"s when he decided to unveil his masterpiece. To propel himself into the limelight."
She drew herself up to her full height.
"Me, I could have ridden the storm, I"ve ridden worse, and the girls are too young to understand. But Orville, darling Orville"s a good man, and to see him publicly humiliated as a cuckold . . . Well, he"d have stood by me, no question, but the scandal would have destroyed him. I couldn"t let Louis do that."
"So you did the only decent thing? Stabbed him with your hat pin?"
What little colour was left drained from Gloria"s face at the sharpness of her friend"s tone.
"It wasn"t what I intended, believe me. The idea was to sneak in and steal the horrid thing, but when I slipped into the back room, he was collapsed over his precious cocaine and-" She made a brave attempt at a smile. "Typical Louis. Never did know when to stop."
"Why kill him, Gloria?"
"Why not, darling? If you"d only seen Kitty after she got back from Switzerland! The doctors say she"ll never be able to have another baby, did you know that? And then there"s Foxy. Five hundred pounds, can you imagine? He"d ruined poor Lulu, was blackmailing Bubbles, had said terrible things about Catspaw, so I thought, what the h.e.l.l."
Gloria pointed to a spot on the back of her elegant swan neck.
"I read that if you go right between the vertebrae it severs the spinal cord. He was out cold, Fizzy. I swear he never felt a thing, and if you ask me do I regret it, I can honestly put my hand on my heart and say it was no worse than putting a rabid dog down."
Fizzy counted to three.
"Except you couldn"t bring yourself to pull the pin out?"
Gloria shuddered. "Could you?"
Fizzy doubted she could have driven it in in the first place. But then she wasn"t a widow still deeply in love with a dead husband doing the best for her two tiny daughters by marrying someone who worshipped the ground they all walked on. A rich man, moreover, who would do anything to protect them. Anything at all "Orville saw you, didn"t he? Orville saw you come out of that room, no doubt ashen and shaking-"
"I didn"t know." Gloria collapsed onto the stool and buried her head in her hands. "I swear, darling, I had no idea, not until they said he"d been hit over the head with that panther."
It didn"t take much working out, really. Orville saw his wife come out of the back room and wanted to know why Louis was upsetting his wife. What went through his head when he saw Louis dead and his wife"s hatpin sticking out of his neck? Fizzy swallowed. Not such a dull stick, after all. Quite the hero, in fact, because it was Orville who pulled out the weapon, then disguised the method of murder by bringing the black marble panther down on his head.
"What did you do with the incriminating canvas?" Fizzy asked. "Everyone"s been searched."
A hint of colour returned to Gloria"s cheeks. "What I planned from the outset." She opened her bag to reveal a pair of nail scissors. "I cut it into tiny pieces and flushed it back to the sewer where it belongs."
Congratultions to Chilton Westlake, Fizzy thought. He"d been very insistent about having all mod cons installed at the gallery!
"What are you going to do now, darling?" Gloria asked.
This time Fizzy counted to ten. Then ten more.
"About what?" she replied steadily. "I only came in here to adjust my suspenders. This left one"s digging in like the blazes."
She swallowed two tablets for migraine.
"Is it my fault we ended up talking for ages about what hats we might be wearing for Ascot?"
It was gone midnight when the Set finally tumbled out of the Cellar, leaving Jo-Jo one very happy proprietor, having trousered twice the usual takings. The moon was full and waxy, inspiring stars to twinkle, cats to yowl and Foxy Fairfax to treat Londoners with a loud rendition of Danny Boy.
"Fancy putting on the old nosebag with me, Fizzy?" Marriott asked, with a hopeful twiddle of the yellow rose in his b.u.t.tonhole. "Only there"s this little French place I know round the corner that serves up some pretty nifty proteins and starch."
"We could all go," Biff said, elbowing Marriott out of the way.
"If you don"t mind, I"ll give the roasts and boileds a miss tonight, chaps. I rather fancy an early night is in order."
And besides. There was a cold, twisted knot deep inside that wouldn"t let her eat if she tried.
"Don"t be a wet blanket, sweetheart," Kitty said, pouring Bubbles into the back of her car. "There"s plenty of room with us girls."
"I know!" Biff nodded towards his convertible parked with its usual insouciance half on, half off the kerb whilst managing to completely block a back alley. "Let"s all go to the Kitty Kat Klub!"
"Good idea," Bubbles and Kitty chorused together.
"It won"t be the first time you"ve sat on my knee, Fizzy," Catspaw said.
"No, but it"d be the first time she"s sat on mine, so don"t be greedy, old man," Chilton retorted.
"Actually," a voice rumbled beneath a fedora set at a rakish (some might say dignified) angle, "the lady"s already accepted a lift."
"Dammit, Squiffy, you always get the pretty ones," Catspaw wailed, as Biff revved up the engine. "See you up there, then, what?"
"Twenty minutes," Teddy promised, as the convertible cranked off the kerb with a splutter. Across the way, Orville was opening the door of his Rolls for Gloria and Teddy watched impa.s.sively as the Hon. Member settled himself behind the wheel and purred off.
"Happy endings all round, then," he murmured.
"Not for Louis Boucard," Fizzy said.
Teddy pursed his lips, but only briefly. "True, but let"s face it, the world"s one scoundrel lighter and none the worse for it, and what odds the police make six wrong arrests before they stuff the file in the "Unsolved" archives and forget it?"
"Is that your definition of happy ending?"
"Ask Chilton. He"ll make four times as much dosh with his prodigy dead and how fortunate there was no scandal to come out, that velvet-covered easel being nothing more than a practical joke and all that."
"Oh, that sort of happy ending."
Teddy leaned against the brickwork and stuffed his hands into his pockets. "Actually," he said quietly. "I was rather thinking of Chilton"s missing exhibit and the matter of true love running smooth."
"There was no portrait, remember?"
"Not under the velvet, no. I meant the one you stole when everyone was crowding into the room when Bubbles found Boucard"s body."
Fizzy reached into her handbag for a cigarette and attached it to the holder with a surprisingly steady hand.
"I don"t even like Louis"s work," she said. "Why would I steal one of his beastly paintings? Cubist mixed with Symbolist-"
" and just the merest smidgen of the draughtsmanship one sees in Migliorini. Yes, I know. Ghastly, aren"t they? Especially the portraits of masked nudes with one brown eye and one blue."
A lighter clicked in the darkness and suddenly Fizzy"s hand was anything but steady.
"I saw it in his studio when I went round to persuade him to lay off my brother. Unfortunately, our French friend was out, so I never did get chance to exercise my knuckles. Shame, that."
"Maybe that was another practical joke," she said evenly. "I mean, we"ve all been searched. Thoroughly, as I recall."
A soft laugh echoed into the night. "Ah, women! What cunning and devious creatures thou art, is it any wonder we men are in thy thrall? First, Gloria-"
"How did you know it was her?"
"Don"t tell anyone, but His Majesty"s Intelligence Service relies more on guesswork than they"d like people to think. But in this case, Miss Potter, I know Boucard, I know his type and more importantly-"
Before she"d even realised what had happened, she found herself in his arms.
" I know how human minds tick. Not to mention," he added an eternity later, "that there are widgets designed to stop ladies" hats from bowling down Mayfair that are called, strangely enough, hat pins."
"And the panther?"
"Who else would cover up another person"s murder? I suspect they"ll both view each other differently from now own. A rather more balanced relationship, one would hope."
"So that"s what you meant by happy endings and true love running smooth."
"Hadn"t quite got to that last bit," he said, kissing her again. "Only it strikes me that Fizzy Potter is a nice enough name, whereas Fizzy Hardcastle tends to run off the tongue rather more smoothly, don"t you think?"
She couldn"t be hearing this right. "Edward James Hardcastle, are you actually asking me to marry you?"
"Not tonight. Far too late to knock up a vicar. But yes. That seems to be the general consensus."
But . . . Fizzy pulled away.
"What about the painting?"
"What about it?" he rasped, drawing her back, and when they finally came up for air, he said, "I don"t imagine you"ll make a habit of stealing. I mean, the logistics of bringing the kids to visit you in the clink would be an absolute nightmare."
"That"s not what I meant," she stuttered.
He gave her nose a little tweak.
"Like my kid brother, darling, we all have siblings."
He tilted her chin up to face him.
"The eyes were the wrong way round, Fizzy. Yours," he said kissing them in turn, "are blue on the left, brown on the right and trust me, artists of Boucard"s calibre don"t get such details wrong."
For the first time in her life, Fizzy knew what it was to be floating on air.
"I suppose I might consider marrying you-" she began, though her actual thoughts ran more along the lines of wild horses.
"Very kind."
" but what about money? Neither of us earns very much-"
"True," he agreed, "but don"t you think this," he whisked off her cloche hat and pulled out "Woman in a Mask", "should get us off to a good start?"
"Do you mind!"
Fizzy s.n.a.t.c.hed at her sister"s naked image and stuffed it back under the brim.
"It"s worth a fortune on the black market," he rumbled.
"Teddy Hardcastle, you aren"t seriously asking me to weigh my sister"s morals against cold hard cash?"
She rammed the cloche back over her bob.
"Because if you are, you ought to know right now that I won"t use something as tawdry as this to pay my electricity bill!"
She adjusted the cloche and thought, silly cow. Shouldn"t have posed for him in the first place.
"A honeymoon, on the other hand . . ."
Teddy"s laughter echoed into the darkness. "Which do you fancy, you wicked, wicked child? A fortnight in Antibes? Or would you prefer to see Venice?"
Fizzy snuggled back into his muscular arms. "Don"t care," she murmured.