A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [127]
‘Wimpole Street,’ Charles told the driver, and as the cab moved away he sat back on the seat and put one finger on her lips as if warning her not to say anything about her predicament, for the driver might hear.
It transpired that Charles did live in Wimpole Street, but although he got the cab to drop them there, the minute the cab drove off he led her away. He took her to a mews at the back of neighbouring Harley Street, to a small flat above what had once been stables.
The flat was clean but very austere, the furniture nothing more than a bed, a couple of armchairs and a stove in the kitchen. Charles said it belonged to a friend who normally kept it for his domestic staff, but this friend was out of the country and had asked Charles to oversee some urgently needed repairs. Apologizing for the lack of comforts, he said he would be back in the morning with some food, but warned her she must not go out, answer the door to anyone or put the light on in the room at the front.
She spent over two weeks in that flat, nearly going out of her mind with boredom and loneliness. Charles came most mornings with food, a book or a magazine, and he also brought some toiletries and clothes as the sequined cocktail dress and high-heeled shoes she’d arrived in were incongruous in her new surroundings. He could never stay for more than a few minutes, and if he knew what was going on at the club in her absence he didn’t tell her.
She was scared too. She would jump at any sudden noise, and with every car that drove into the mews she fully expected Earl and his men to be coming to get her.
On the twelfth day, Charles brought her a newspaper to read.
‘Look on the third page,’ he said with an impish grin.
The headline was ‘Missing Hostess Abducted’. There was also a photograph of her, taken in the Starlight club.
She read with some amusement that on the night Charles brought her here, her neighbours reported they had heard her coming in around twothirty in the morning, and some while later heard the sound of her door being forced, male voices shouting and furniture being knocked over and broken. When they looked out of their own front door, they saw two men half-dragging an injured person down the stairs who they assumed was Amy Tuckett.
Charles went on to tell her that he and John now knew that the man behind the bully boys was a man called Jack Trueman. Nora recalled meeting him just once in her first week at the Starlight, a big man with dark hair, strong, craggy features and cold eyes. One of the girls had told her he owned several clubs, casinos and the kind of hotels in Paddington that were used by prostitutes. Even she said he was a man to steer clear of.
John turned up later that day and told her Amy Tuckett had got to stay missing. It was he who fabricated Nora Diamond, with false references and a National Insurance number. He jokingly called her ‘the woman who never was’, but cautioned her that if she ever broke her cover, she would be in very real danger. He said Jack Trueman was entirely ruthless, and he made sure that anyone who crossed him came to regret it bitterly.
The Ava Gardner hairstyle and the glamour-girl clothes had to go. Nora dyed her hair dark brown and put it up in an unflattering bun. Charles bought her a matronly navy blue costume and sturdy court shoes, and the transformation was complete. She became the formidable and very correct Miss Diamond.
Then, finally, she was able to walk out of that mews flat door, when John sent her to the vacant flat in Dale Street.
He knew it had become empty because he lived with his parents and two sisters at number 13. He thought it an ideal place because he could continue to keep a discreet eye out for her. At the same time he couldn’t intervene on her behalf with Mr Capel, the landlord, because he didn’t want anyone to know