The House of Lost Souls - F. G. Cottam [40]
Eleven
On the Sunday, he asked Lucinda to give him all her notes, the whole file, everything she had on Gibson-Hoare. It was a scant archive. There was a photocopy of a Times obituary and Xeroxes of some of the fashion plates kept at the British Museum. There was an ancient copy of Vogue containing a spread of fashion pictures she had taken on what appeared to be a touring-car and picnic theme. Brogued shoes and flat caps accessorized tweed and gabardine in pictures that cried out to be in colour. But colour in those days would have meant hand-tinting. Another feature, this one in Harper’s Bazaar, was a swimsuit story shot on what looked, from the intensity of light, like the Riviera. Beautiful people lounged on chairs and a diving board against the bleached cement of a deco pool. You could see her skill in this shoot, in the tactile way she handled skin and light, like a sculptress with her camera.
Finally there was a photograph of Gibson-Hoare herself. She wore her dark hair woven in plaits around her head, under a glistening tiara. There were pearls around her neck in a thick rope. And her shoulderless dress, sewn with beads, winked and glistened in the light from a chandelier. The picture was a group shot and had been taken at a table at the Café Royal. Café Royal insignia embroidered a curtain behind the smiling group. All the figures in the shot with her were male. There were five of them, they were in evening wear, and Seaton recognised two. One of the two was Crowley again, smiling again, his deep eyes holding an expression entirely at odds with the bland ordinariness of his other facial features. Also recognisable was Oswald Mosley, younger and thinner in the face than he became when he was notorious, but still unmistakable.
Seaton turned the photograph over. The names of the individuals in the group were pencilled on to the back of the print. Lucinda was leaning over her sewing machine, biting through a length of cotton thread. She tilted her head in a way he found funny when she did it, like a cat, worrying at something.
‘Who is Wheatley?’
‘A thriller writer. His books are all out of print.’
He nodded.
‘Fischer?’
‘Some sort of industrialist. An arms dealer, I think. Made a fortune in the aftermath of the Great War out of weapons patents. I’ve no idea about the fifth guy. But she ran with a pretty louche crowd, did Pandora.’
Seaton nodded. He had shifted from the sofa to a chair under the window to see the picture in better light. The eyes of the men in it all seemed to share the same lazy malevolence the eyes of big cats have when they doze, half-awake, between kills. It was a look that gave the lie to ever relaxing in the truest sense. There was a lethal indolence there, a sort of predatory alertness only lightly disguised. Except for Crowley. To Seaton, Crowley in the Café Royal picture simply looked deranged.
There was no sincerity in any of the smiles. Pandora Gibson-Hoare had that in common, at least, with the people with whom she shared her table. But when Seaton looked closely, he didn’t think she looked truly one of them, not really. Under the jewellery and elaboration, he thought she manifested two characteristics unique to her in the group. She looked very beautiful. And she looked afraid.
He started first thing on Monday morning, just as soon as he had opened what post he had at his desk and phoned the press bureau at Scotland Yard to learn of any crimes committed over the weekend on Hackney’s ground. There were several, of course, but none that merited following up. They got an edition out twice-weekly and Monday was a press day. But the paper was pretty full, looking only for a front-page lead. There was a gruesome court report about a revenge killing already on the stocks, and one of the boys was working on