The Bluebeard Room (5 page)

Her transatlantic flight had been smooth and uneventful. She had read
Wicca: The Way of Wisdom
until she dozed off around 11:00
P.M.
When she awoke, daylight was seeping in the curtained window, and the thought uppermost in her mind was Sergeant Weintraub’s remark about the bag of cocaine that someone had slipped into her handbag.

Had someone deliberately tried to bring about her arrest on a narcotics charge?

Her musing ended when the stewardesses served breakfast. Nancy dismissed the unpleasant subject
from her mind as she ate and chatted with the Japanese electronics salesman sitting next to her. Presently the pilot announced over the intercom that the plane was approaching London. Twenty minutes later the passengers were disembarking into Terminal 3.

Heathrow struck Nancy as the biggest, busiest, most confusing, most sprawling airport she had ever passed through. There seemed to be a large number of young people and news cameramen everywhere she looked. The corridors seemed interminable, and one of the moving walkways had broken down. But the passport inspection was conducted with typical British courtesy, and her luggage was simply waved through Her Majesty’s Customs with a cheery smile of welcome.

Nancy was pushing a cart through what she hoped was the final corridor leading to the terminal exit when a voice called out, “ ’Oi there, Red!”

No one at home ever called her that—her hair shone too lustrously golden for such a monochromatic nickname. Besides, why would any cockney be hailing Nancy Drew?

Curiosity turned her head, nevertheless. A door had just opened and a face was grinning out at her from a room off the corridor. It was Freddie Isham, the Crowned Heads’ bass player!

“Stone the crows! Wotcher doin’ ’ere in England, luvvie?”

Freddie was a jolly, hulking teddy bear with a
swarthy touch of West Indian blood, easily the most good-natured and likeable of the group.

“Just landed, what does it look like?” Nancy grinned back, pointing to her luggage cart.

Freddie reached his big paw out to draw her into the room. “I was ‘avin’ a dekko for our chauffeur, and look ’oo turned up!” he announced proudly.

“Blimey, you must be telepathic!” chortled Bobo Evans. He and Adam Muir enthusiastically welcomed the American teenager.

The room seemed full of helmeted policemen. They were obviously preparing to buck the crowd of fans and escort the Crowned Heads out of the terminal as soon as their limousine was in position at the door. Nancy suddenly understood why she had seen all those young people and news cameramen drifting so expectantly about the airport.

Then her eyes fell on Lance Warrick—and her heart flipped. There was no mistaking the glint in his eyes. He wasn’t just turning on the charm for another groupie, he was genuinely delighted to see her!

“Nancy, me ould luv!” he cried, and pushed past several bobbies to enfold her in his arms.

“Whoa—hey!” Turning her cheek to his kiss, she laughingly disengaged from his embrace. But there was no mistaking the effect on her pulse.

Over Lance’s shoulder, Nancy glimpsed a look of vexation on Jane Royce’s stylishly pretty face.

“Don’t tell me someone’s meeting you?” said
Lance. “Never mind. If there is, the poor chump’s out of luck! You’re riding into town with us!”

Soon they were speeding along the left-hand side of the highway toward central London in a limousine long and glossy enough for the Royal Family.

Lance had a townhouse in Chelsea and wanted Nancy to be his guest. But she insisted on taking the room Mrs. Harwood had booked for her at Claridge’s Hotel in the snazzy Mayfair district of London’s West End.

“All right, my pet. But you’re lunching with me, and let’s have no backchat!”

“But Lance darling, you have all sorts of press interviews set up for this afternoon,” wailed Jane Royce. “And I’ve laid on a business meeting with the record company about your next video.”

“So plead jet lag and reschedule.” Turning to the American girl, he went on, “One o’clock sharp, then, right luv?”

Nancy smiled as the Claridge’s doorman held open the door of the limousine for her. “Well . . . okay, since you’re twisting my arm!”

At the reception desk, a frock-coated hotel clerk informed Nancy that she’d had a phone call less than half an hour ago from Lady Lisa Penvellyn.

“This is her number, Miss Drew. She asked if you’d ring her up as soon as you arrived.”

“Thank you.”

Lisa was ecstatic. “Oh Nancy, how good it is to hear your voice!”

“And yours, Lisa!”

“I can’t tell you how much I look forward to talking over old times. I’ve been counting the hours ever since Mom told me you were coming! How soon can you start for Cornwall?”

Nancy had been prepared to leave London that afternoon after a brief rest and change of clothes. But her unexpected lunch date and a chance to see more of Lance Warrick had suddenly scrambled her plans. “Well, how about tomorrow, Lisa?”

“Oh, good! I’ll count on that, Nan! Let me tell you how to get here. Penvellyn Castle’s located just outside a little fishing village called Polpenny on the south coast of Cornwall. You can get an express train out of Paddington Station that’ll—”

“Whoa—let me get a pencil!” laughed Nancy.

After she hung up, she showered and changed into a smart green and white striped silk dress, to which she added a straw hat. When Lance phoned from the lobby, she was ready.

He was hiding behind dark glasses, but they still had to make a run for it from the hotel to evade a sudden deluge of screeching rock fans. Nancy couldn’t help feeling elated as they zoomed off in his sleek, open red sports car, which a bellhop had been holding ready with its engine running.

She was also touched and pleased when Lance insisted on giving her a quick guided tour through the heart of London before lunch.

What a feast it all is, thought Nancy. The bustling
pageant of Picadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square with its column and lions, a glimpse of the scarlet-plumed Horse Guards at Whitehall, then up Fleet Street, with the dome of St. Paul’s floating on the skyline, toward the fabled Tower of London and Tower Bridge.

Lance circled back north past the British Museum. Then he turned south again through Soho toward the Thames to take in the Houses of Parliament as Big Ben was striking the quarter-hour, and historic Westminster Abbey, followed by the climactic spectacle of Buckingham Palace, with a brace of bearskinned, red-coated Grenadier Guards on sentry duty.

Nancy had seen it all before, but she loved seeing it again.

The gray, stately old city with its lovely green parks was changing. There were more modern towers and office blocks amid the ancient landmarks than Nancy had noticed on her last trip.

And the clothing styles were certainly changing, too! The streets teemed with young people in the wildest imaginable outfits. Cross-gender dressing, bizarre haircuts and hairdos—everyone seemed bent on achieving the most outrageous possible image.

“They make me feel positively stodgy!” Nancy smiled.

Lance beamed at her admiringly. “Ah, but there’s one important difference you’re forgetting!”

“What’s that?”

“None of those dolly-birds is as lovely as you!”

Crossing Sloane Square, they drove west down King’s Road through trendy Chelsea. Lance sped on past the urban sprawl to a quiet pub with garden tables overlooking the river.

As they lunched on salad, prawns and quiche, Nancy found herself forgetting that she was the guest of a famous rock star. Aside from his accent, she might have been chatting with a young American she’d known from high school.

But his background was certainly worlds different from Ned Nickerson’s. Workingclass by birth, Lance Warrick had made it to Oxford on brains alone. Originally he’d planned to be a serious composer.

“What made you turn to rock?” she inquired.

Lance grinned sharply. “Ambition. I reckoned that was the fastest way to open doors and make meself rich and famous.”

As he spoke, his voice lost some of its Oxford accent and reverted to that of a Midland factory town. It also took on a slight edge.

“I’m not sure I believe that,” Nancy said quietly.

“You’d better, luv. It’s the truth. Beethoven was a rare old hand at crankin’ out symphonies, but he’d have a rough time gettin’ one played today, especially if he came from Leeds or Birmingham.”

“Symphonies aren’t the only kind of music worth
hearing. I’ll admit I’m no expert, but I’ve been listening to your group ever since you first began making records. You started out as a mix of punk and heavy metal, and then got more and more new wave and progressive. But right now there isn’t
any
label that fits. Your music is different from anything else on the rock scene today. What makes you so sure the London Symphony or New York Philharmonic
won’t
be playing it some day?”

Lance Warrick looked into her eyes for a long moment. Then he murmured, “You’re quite an interesting woman, aren’t you, Nancy Drew?”

A feminine figure was coming across the garden. The spell that had woven itself around her and Lance was suddenly broken as Nancy recognized Jane Royce.

“I do hate to interrupt this cozy little twosome,” the English girl said, “but I’m afraid we have an urgent problem with Ian Purcell, Lance.”

“Ian?” The rock star frowned at her irritably. “He’s still sunning himself in Polpenny, isn’t he?”

“Not any more. He’s back in London, and acting very oddly, it appears.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jane Royce shrugged a shapely shoulder. “Dunno, darling. I couldn’t quite make it all out over the phone, but his landlady’s threatening to call the police unless you come round straightaway.”

Lance flung down his napkin angrily. “What a freaking bore!” To Nancy he added, “Could you possibly forgive me if I—”

She smiled. “Don’t apologize, I understand. Ian Purcell used to be your bass player, didn’t he?”

“That’s right, till he got on drugs.”

“And he’s just back from Polpenny, in Cornwall?”

Lance nodded, intrigued by her question.

“Then if I may,” said Nancy, “I’ll come with you.”

“What, may one ask, is so important about Polpenny?” asked Jane Royce as they drove back into London.

Her taxi to the pub had been dismissed, and she was crammed, none too happily, into the tiny back seat of Lance’s red sports car.

“I’ve been invited to visit there,” said Nancy. She told how her friend had married Lord Penvellyn.

“I’m not sure I get the connection, darling. I mean, what does the fact that Ian’s been loafing around Polpenny while he gets his head together, have to do with your friend in Penvellyn Castle?”

Nancy chose to shrug lightly. “If he knows Polpenny, perhaps he can tell me what it’s like.”

“From the way his landlady sounded, I doubt if Ian’s in any state to tell anybody anything.”

Nancy made no reply. The notion that Ian Purcell’s strange behavior might be related to Lisa Penvellyn’s mysterious trouble seemed far-fetched. Nevertheless, the double connection with Polpenny seemed an odd coincidence, and Nancy was determined to find out more.

Purcell, it turned out, had rooms in a part of the city called Holland Park, which he used on trips back to London while recovering from his drug addiction in Cornwall.

His lodging house, not far off Kensington High Street, was a once imposing stucco villa with a pillared porch that lent it a touch of faded grandeur. Now grimy with age, it looked like a dignified old woman who had sunk into genteel poverty.

“Oh, Mr. Warrick!” the landlady clucked. “I’ve been trying to reach you ever since I heard on the telly that you were back. A girl at one of the record studios finally told me where to call, after I explained it was about Mr. Purcell.”

“What exactly is wrong with him, Mrs. Roby?”

“Oh dear, it’ll break your heart when you see him, Mr. Warrick! He’s hardly moved or said a word since he got in early yesterday, and when he does talk, it’s just gibberish. A gentleman who came to see him this morning couldn’t get any sense out of him, either.”

“Sounds like he’s coming down from a bad drug trip,” Lance muttered to Jane as they followed the landlady up the stairs.

“Oh no, he’s been staying off drugs, that I do believe!” put in Mrs. Roby. “If he hadn’t, you can be sure I’d have sent him packing.”

She knocked on the door of her lodger’s room. When there was no response, Lance opened it, only to stop short with a stifled exclamation.

Ian Purcell, Nancy now saw, occupied a dingy but spacious one-room apartment furnished in florid Victorian style. He was seated in front of the fireplace partially facing the door. The skinny, straw-haired bass player showed only the barest awareness of his visitors. His eyes seemed haunted and his mouth hung open with a trace of drool from one corner.

“For God’s sake, Ian, snap out of it!” Lance blurted. But the rocker’s sole response when shaken was a babble of meaningless sounds.

“How long has he been like this, Mrs. Roby?”

“A good day and a half, it’s been. ’Twasn’t six
A.M.
when he got in yesterday. Cook was in the kitchen when she heard him at the door. He had a key, of course, but couldn’t fit it in the lock, so he rang the bell. When she let him in, he collapsed in her arms. She had to wake our handyman, and the two of them got him upstairs to his room. Since then, I’ve heard him stumbling about a bit now and then, but that’s all.”

Lance Warrick heaved a heavy sigh. “All right, I suppose we’d better call an ambulance.”

Nancy spoke diffidently to the landlady, “Did you say Mr. Purcell had a visitor this morning?”

“That’s right, Miss. Quite a nice-dressed gentleman, he was.”

“Did he give his name?”

“Hmm, seems he did, but I don’t recall offhand. Some kind of art dealer, I believe. Wait now—he left a card, come to think of it.”

While Lance went to phone for an ambulance, Mrs. Roby fetched the card to show Nancy. It named the caller as Eustace Thorne, a dealer in objets d’art with a shop on Pimlico Road.