The Queen's Accomplice by Susan Elia Macneal

Author:Susan Elia Macneal [MacNeal, Susan Elia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780804178723
Google: 5ef4DAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B01AES53OA
Barnesnoble: B01AES53OA
Goodreads: 28503798
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 2016-03-15T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Two undercover MI-5 officers were dispatched to the Broadcasting House, the home of the BBC on Langham Place, and brought back Leonard Roth. He was tall and slim and somewhere in his forties. He was a handsome man, in a slick, unctuous way, with too much sandalwood cologne and hair crème.

“All right, same as before,” Durgin warned Maggie, eyes narrowing. “Mr. Standish and I will do the questioning—and you may watch through the mirrored glass.”

“And, as before,” Maggie countered, “I’d prefer to be in the room and contribute to the interrogation.”

“Sorry, Miss Tiger,” Durgin told her, not unkindly. “And I’m sorry you had to see the sorts of things you found in his apartment.”

Oh, for heaven’s sake. “So, let me get this straight—you’re not worried about my seeing the corpses of murdered women, but you are worried about my seeing writings and photographs about sex? Sex trumps death? I’d say that’s rather puritanical, Detective. And here I thought we Yanks had cornered the market on that.”

“If Roth’s our Blackout Beast, there will be stories disclosed you might not have the stomach for, Miss Tiger.”

“If you hadn’t noticed, Detective, I don’t scare easily.”

“And, as I’ve said before, there are facts he might not disclose in the presence of a young woman.”

There were bigger battles to fight. “Fine.”

—

In the interrogation room, Leonard Roth sat at a wooden table, drumming his fingers.

“I’d like to lodge a complaint against the agents who came for me at the BBC,” he began in plummy tones. “Not only did they manhandle me, but they caused me undue embarrassment. How I’m going to explain this to my producer—”

“Looks like you enjoy a bit of manhandling,” Durgin interrupted. He took the seat across from Roth. “Or is it that you like to do the manhandling yourself?”

“What the devil?” Roth exclaimed.

Mark took the charcoal sketches of the girls in various stages of undress from his briefcase. He set them on the table, fanning the papers out like a deck of cards. “How well did you know these women?”

Roth looked down at the drawings, then gave a short, strangled laugh. “This is a simple misunderstanding—I don’t know them at all.”

“You seem to know them quite…intimately,” Durgin insisted.

Roth crossed his legs and leaned back in his chair. “Well, it’s not my fault the girls don’t close their blinds, now, is it?”

Mark leaned in. “It’s not as if they’re expecting someone across the way to have a bloody telescope!”

“If you ask me, if they left their curtains open, they wanted to be seen.” Roth shrugged. “Probably enjoyed it.”

“Where did you take them?” Durgin pressed. “When you met with these girls—where did you go?”

“I never met these girls—I never even spoke to them!” He tugged at his tie. “I know it might not look like it with everything you’ve seen in my room—but everything I do is, er, solo.”

“Where were you on the nights of March twentieth, twenty-seventh, and twenty-ninth?”

There was a pause as Roth searched his memory. “I was at the studio,” he managed.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.