Murder in the London Lights by L. B. Hathaway

Author:L. B. Hathaway [Hathaway, L. B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Amazon: B08R466ZYS
Goodreads: 56379079
Publisher: Whitehaven Man Press London
Published: 2020-12-20T00:00:00+00:00

Five

It had taken a few minutes for the hysterical girl to calm down, with Mr Poulson offering soothing platitudes, and Inspector Oats actually seeming sympathetic for once.

When it was established that Natacha Valentino was unhurt, and that the tiny Christmas tree favour had probably just malfunctioned, the group started to move down Rupert Street, moving on to Coventry Street, with Inspector Oats leading the brigade.

He was followed by Valentino, who was surrounded on either side by his Manager and Personal Secretary, with the two American women in white behind, and Posie and Dolly at the back, flanked by Richard Lovelace and Sergeant Fox.

Posie’s thoughts were scrambling.

NOW NATACHA VALENTINO WILL BE CAUGHT IN A BLAZE.

Well: she nearly had been caught in a horrible blaze just now, hadn’t she? Or had that been the most awful coincidence?

Whatever the explanation, there was no way Posie would be handing her own small favour over to Richard’s beloved daughter Phyllis to play with.

As she walked Posie was going over in her mind those newspaper headlines from this evening’s editions which Fox had brought to her attention, with their varied suggestions as to who might be switching on the lights: the Prince of Wales; Charlie Chaplin; Douglas Fairbanks. A small, outside chance it was Valentino…

He'd been so careful about keeping out of the limelight, and he wasn’t here filming, or on a big, well-advertised publicity trip. Nor on a holiday either. Most of the time Valentino was in New York, or Hollywood, where he lived, or, more recently, in Paris.

So, unless prompted, most newspaper editors and the general public would have assumed that Valentino was in one of those places.

Someone, somewhere had definitely let on.

But why? And was it connected to the notes?

Posie tripped along the salted-snowy-slushy streets in her not-very-practical Mary-Janes, wishing longingly for her sturdy black snow-boots which she kept in her office at Grape Street, for weather exactly like this.

She barely noticed the crowds massing on the street’s pavements like one black heaving monster, people clad in dingy raincoats and wet-weather gear, desperate for a glimpse of light and glamour; of anything more hopeful than their own lives.

She took in a blurry line of injured and maimed men – Great War veterans – begging on mats of damp cardboard outside the cafés and restaurants which famously lined this street. Dirty slush edged the pavements and snowflakes were still falling heavily.

Posie noticed that the normal street-lamps were not on, and all the light in the dark of the evening was coming out of the huge arched windows set in the grey-stone buildings which lined the road: cinemas, theatres, shops, the Trocadero Restaurant.

One cinema was advertising a film called Blood and Sand with the title picked out in dazzling white bulbs, and with double life-sized posters stuck up one after the other for an entire run of windows. To Posie’s shock, she saw the dark eyes of Valentino staring out at her from these windows, again and again as she walked by, dressed gaudily as

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