A Traitor at Tower Bridge Read online

  A Traitor At Tower Bridge

  by

  Lynda Wilcox

  Copyright ©2020 by Lynda Wilcox. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or parts thereof, in any form.

  All characters are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 1

  The small, neat woman standing like a supplicant on the drawing room carpet, wrung nervous hands, twisting her wedding ring round and around her finger.

  “Are you the lady what placed the advertisement in the paper?”

  “The one for a private enquiry agent? Yes, that’s me. My name is Eleanor. I’m Lady Bakewell, but don’t worry about that, or what to call me. Please tell me what I can do to help you?”

  The woman looked at her keenly. “You seem rather young for the job, if you don’t mind me saying so, er...ma’am.”

  Eleanor was twenty-four, and the casual observer would have seen a tall, slender figure, with blonde hair and eyes the colour of cornflowers. However, her ladyship was well versed in dealing with those who thought that youth equalled incompetence.

  “Yes, it may seem that way. However, I do have considerable experience, and have worked closely with Scotland Yard on a couple of cases. I can’t guarantee success, of course, not even the police can do that, so why don’t you tell me why you need an enquiry agent?”

  Her visitor gave an almost imperceptible shrug, followed by a tremulous smile of acceptance. “Yes, all right. I’ve come because I’d like you to find my husband,” she said. “He’s missing.”

  Eleanor, who had stood to welcome the visitor, resumed her seat and indicated the chair on the opposite side of the fireplace. The early spring day was cool and the coals had been lit, lending the elegant drawing room at Bellevue Mansions a pleasing and necessary warmth.

  “Please take a seat, Mrs...?”

  “Cropper, ma’am. Mary Cropper. My husband’s name is Martin.”

  As Mrs Cropper settled herself in the comfortable and capacious armchair, Eleanor took stock of her. She saw a woman in her early forties, neither extravagantly nor shabbily dressed, with light brown hair above a pair of fine, if troubled, grey eyes. Her skin held a ghastly pallor, as if she hadn’t slept in a long, long while.

  “Would you like tea? It’s nearly four o’clock.”

  “No, I’m fine thank you. How much would you charge for finding him?”

  “That depends on the nature of the work, but I shouldn’t think it would be a great deal. A couple of pounds, perhaps.”

  Eleanor had begun offering her services as a private enquiry agent a mere four months previously. Her reasons for doing so, and placing discreet advertisements in the Times newspaper and The Lady magazine, were not financial. As the daughter of the Duke of Bakewell, and in possession of a sizeable income inherited from an abstemious great aunt, she was well provided for and did not need to charge her few clients outlandish amounts in order to make a living.

  Mrs Cropper was only the fourth such client and, in the absence of her husband, might easily be in straitened circumstances. Far better to win her trust than rob her of money.

  “I have a few savings, an’ I do need to find him.”

  “Of course. If I could just take a few details from you, please.”

  Her guest provided her address, and said that they were not on the telephone, although she was hoping to persuade their landlord to have one put in.

  “They have their drawbacks,” Eleanor admitted, “but on the whole I find the instrument to be a most useful invention. Now, please tell me a little about your husband, Mrs Cropper. How long has he been missing?”

  As she spoke, Eleanor took a notebook and pen from the occasional table at her side, and wrote Mary’s name at the top of a fresh page in a rounded hand.

  “It’ll be a week tomorrow. He went out to work last Saturday morning an’ he never returned.”

  Martin Cropper worked for Bairstow and Son, a company of industrial painters. They had the contract to repaint Tower Bridge, currently being refurbished in light of the Empire Exhibition at Wembley Park, which was expected to bring in large crowds from around the world. When the exhibition opened, in just a few weeks’ time, London would put on a show and its monuments had to look at their best.

  “He only worked a half day on Saturdays.” Mary Cropper looked earnestly at her hostess. “I’ve had words with Mr Bairstow, he’s a nice man, and he says that Martin turned up and worked his shift, but they haven’t seen ‘im since.”

  Eleanor asked for the address of the company and wrote that down, too. The missing man’s employer would be first on the list for a visit.

  “I see.” Eleanor smiled at the nervous woman opposite, attempting to put her at ease. “I will have a word with the gentleman myself, and his workmates, too, just so that I may form my own opinion of them, not that I necessarily doubt what they’ve told you. Besides, they may have remembered something new since you spoke to them.”

  Mary nodded her understanding. “Of course.”

  “Now, will you supply me with a physical description of your husband, please, and please be as specific as you can.”

  “Yes, all right. Well, now, let me see. He’s tall, nigh on six feet, I reckon. He’s got blond hair and blue eyes, and is fairly slim, but with broad shoulders.”

  “Would you say he was handsome?”

  Eleanor could think of any number of reasons a good-looking man might go missing from home. Mary, however, did not pick up on the inference, and a smile appeared on her weary, worried face, easing out the lines, making her appear younger. There was a suspicion of a sniffle when she replied.

  “I think so, ma’am. He wouldn’t do for everyone, but I always thought him good looking, and we rubbed along together pretty well, him and me.”

  “There had been no arguments between you?”

  “Oh, no, ma’am. Nothing like that. He was very easy going was Martin. It took a lot to have a fallin’ out with him.”

  “You didn’t have ‘words’, then, last Saturday morning?”

  “No, nothing like that. He kissed me goodbye and said he’d see me later, and would I cook him some ham and eggs for lunch. He was partial to ham and eggs, you see.”

  Eleanor considered that a good enough reason for Martin Cropper to have gone home after work. The way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, as the old saying had it. So, what had happened to prevent him from doing so?

  Already beginning to fear the worst, and that some grave harm had befallen the man, she spoke lightly as she asked her next question, lest she further alarm the woman opposite.

  “Does your husband have any distinguishing marks, Mrs Cropper? A scar, or a large mustache, for example?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. I don’t care for bristles, so Martin is always clean shaven.”

  He might have a week’s worth of stubble by now, though, Eleanor reflected. She wrote down ‘no beard’ and put a question mark aft
er it.

  “There is one thing, ma’am, though I don’t suppose it helps.” Mary rubbed a forefinger across her chin.

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “Martin’s got a mole on the inside of his right knee, right here.” She patted the equivalent place on her own leg. “It’s unusual because it’s heart-shaped. He always joked that he had a soft spot for me, and that was it.” She rummaged in her bag and brought out a large cotton handkerchief which she pressed to her mouth. Her eyes brimmed with tears. “I do wish he’d come home. I miss him so much.”

  Eleanor cast a sympathetic glance at Mary Cropper and let her sniffle for a moment before returning, with some briskness, to the matter in hand.

  She asked a series of questions, including what Mr Cropper had been wearing when he’d left for work a week ago, and dutifully noted down the answers. The picture that emerged from the answers Mary gave her was of a quiet, home-loving man, hard-working and devoted to his wife.

  He almost seemed too good to be true, for according to Mary, Martin had no flaws. In Eleanor’s experience, such a man did not exist, though perhaps it was only natural — now that Mary had been without him for a week — that his wife viewed him through rose-tinted spectacles.

  “Have you reported him missing, to the police I mean?”

  “Pftt!” Mary dismissed the entire force with a snap of her fingers. “Yes, I went to Shand Street police station, but that was a waste of time.”

  “What happened?”

  Mary compressed her lips and wrinkled her nose. “Some whippersnapper of a constable took the details — only after I insisted, mind — said there weren’t much they could do, and implied my Martin had gone off with another woman. As if he would. My husband were happy at home, and I made sure I told the young constable so.”

  Her disapproving look silenced Eleanor’s murmur of agreement. It was clear Mrs Cropper would never be persuaded that a rival for her husband’s affections lay behind his disappearance. It was best to move on.

  “Is there anything else that you can think of that might help me find your husband, Mrs Cropper? Was he worried about anything before he disappeared? Was he ill or had a medical condition?”

  The answer to all these questions was ‘no’, according to Mary, and a short while later she left.

  Eleanor showed her out and assured her that she would do her best to find Martin.

  “I’ll make a start tomorrow and I’ll keep in touch with you throughout my search. As you are not on the telephone, it will mean me calling on you personally. When is the best time to do that?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m there all day. On my own, now.” She dabbed her nose with the handkerchief, bobbed a curtsey, and was gone.

  Eleanor closed the door and went back into the drawing room. She mixed herself a cocktail at the drinks trolley under the window, and rang for her maid.

  Matilda Walton, known as Tilly, was the daughter of the Duke of Bakewell’s cook, and had grown up with her mistress at the family’s ancestral home in Derbyshire. The two were of an age, and devoted to each other.

  “Yes, my lady?”

  “Take a seat, Tilly, I’d like to talk to you about my latest client. I’d value your opinion.”

  Tilly had mousy brown hair, a round face with a snub nose and a pair of bright button eyes that she directed at her mistress as she perched on the edge of the sofa. She watched as Eleanor took a pull of her drink, helped herself to a cigarette from a box on the mantelpiece and then resumed her seat.

  “That was Mrs Mary Cropper. She wants me to find her husband.”

  Eleanor related the conversation, as much to fix the facts in her own mind as to impart them to Tilly.

  It had not been her own idea to set herself up as an enquiry agent. That honour rested with her friend Lady Ann Carstairs who, since the war, had set up in business as a party planner to the rich and famous, and it was these same clients that Eleanor had assumed that she would attract.

  The war had done much to bridge the divide between the classes — and a good thing too, in Eleanor’s estimation — but faced with Mrs Cropper, she had felt out of her depth. She could understand the woman’s suffering, even though she had no idea where to begin searching for her missing husband.

  “I don’t know if I did the right thing, Tilly. Maybe I should have refused the case, though I had no grounds to do so. Or, maybe it would have been better if I’d played up her fears, and tried to mentally prepare her for the worst.”

  “If she’s got any sense, she’d have realised that for herself before now, my lady.” Tilly threw her mistress a sympathetic look while being as blunt and honest as always.

  Eleanor leaned forward, hands between her knees. “Do you think so? She seemed to me to be hanging on to hope, though goodness knows there seems little enough of that, if I’m reading the situation aright.”

  “Exactly! Where does she think he’s got to, if he’s alive and well?” Tilly gave Eleanor a direct look. “You have to face it, my lady, even if she won’t. Mr Cropper has either found himself another woman — or he’s dead.”

  Eleanor grimaced. Neither answer was what Mary Cropper wanted to hear.

  “And,” the inexorable Tilly went on, “when you’ve found out which it is, it will be you what has to tell her that.”

  Chapter 2

  The following morning, Eleanor rang down to the garage next to Bellevue Mansions, and asked them to bring her car around. It was a fair step between her home in Piccadilly and her destination south of the Thames, and she never needed an excuse to drive her beloved Lagonda.

  The car’s throaty roar heralded its arrival at the front of the building and she ran down the front steps to where the car man held the door open for her.

  “Lovely day for a spin, my lady. She’s topped up with petrol if you’re going far.”

  Eleanor swung herself into the driving seat. “Thanks, Sam. Only to Southwark.”

  “Well, take care how you go.”

  “I will. Toodle-oo.”

  He closed the door and, with a wave goodbye, Eleanor drove off down Piccadilly and into the hustle and bustle of London traffic on a Saturday morning. Her route took her to Trafalgar Square, then along the Embankment towards Southwark Bridge. She took her time, enjoying the leisurely drive and the bright spring day.

  After crossing over the Thames, she drove around for a while, familiarising herself with an area she had rarely visited.

  Since her arrival in the capital four years ago in 1920, much of Eleanor’s time had been spent north of the river in the more affluent districts of London, such as Knightsbridge, Belgravia, and Mayfair.

  It was there that her friends lived, friends that were largely of her own class, the sons and daughters of the nobility — or what was left of them since the war. Yet London had always been a huge melting pot of different races and nationalities, different classes, religions, and incomes.

  Mary Cropper’s case was the first she had accepted outside of her own social milieu, and Eleanor worried that it would prove beyond her wit and scope to solve it. She knew Tilly would prefer her mistress to deal only with her own kind, but Eleanor wanted to turn no one away. If the need was genuine, she wanted to help.

  It wasn’t surprising that with her mind on these thoughts and not on her driving, Eleanor was soon hopelessly lost. Southwark had a long history, a fine cathedral, and a reputation of being the haunt of Shakespeare — in the early 1600s, both the Rose and the Globe theatres could be found there. At that time, too, it had also contained the largest concentration of brothels in the city.

  Now, although Southwark was enjoying a period of regeneration, it remained a warren of streets, of twisting, winding alleyways, dark silent squares, and industrial units, all nestled behind the docks and railways that bordered the river.

  Eleanor stopped the car and asked a passer-by for help.

  “Excuse me, I’m looking for Talbot Street. For Bairstow and Son, the painters.”

  The d
irections given were long-winded and convoluted. She did her best to memorise them, but it took a further fifteen minutes of driving around before she spotted the place she wanted.

  Bairstow and Son consisted of a single storey cottage with an attached compound surrounded by a high wall. A set of tall wrought iron gates stood wide, and she nosed the Lagonda into the yard and parked.

  Eleanor got out and stretched her legs, looking around with interest at a large lean-to storage area against one wall. It was filled with ladders and ropes, wooden planks, and huge drums of paint and thinners, more than she’d ever seen in one place. Yet it was probably all for Tower Bridge. It was, she reminded herself, not only a long stretch across the river, but the bridge’s towers made it a tall structure, too.

  She made her way to the building, where a painted sign bearing the single word ‘Office’ had been attached to the wall above the door.

  With a brief rap, she pushed the door open and stepped inside where a man in his late fifties sat at a table, poring over an accounts ledger. His dark hair was slicked back off a wide forehead and gleamed with pomade. It shone under the light of a three bulb chandelier suspended above him, for even though it was broad daylight outside, the room’s interior appeared sombre and overcrowded.

  He looked up. Sharp eyes surveyed her, first with suspicion, then with approval.

  “Mr Bairstow? I’m Lady Eleanor Bakewell, a private enquiry agent.” She handed him her card. “I wonder if you would be kind enough to give me a few minutes of your time. I’m here about the disappearance of Martin Cropper.”

  “Oh?” He appeared nonplussed, looking down at her card, then back up at her face.

  “He is an employee of yours, I take it?”

  “Well, he was. Still is, I hope. Take a seat, your ladyship.” He stood up and fetched a chair from against the wall, putting it in front of the table that served as his desk and motioning for her to sit.

  “Thank you. I’m working for Mary Cropper. She tells me she has been to see you, so you’ll know how worried she is.”

  “Oh, indeed. I don’t see, though, what more I can tell you, that I haven’t already told her.”