A Coat of Varnish (11 page)

‘I dare say.’

‘Women used to fall for them. It’s not so surprising after all, that Kate fell for him.’

‘I dare say.’ Humphrey suddenly came out of his reverie, and spoke brusquely. ‘She might have found someone better. That would have been more tolerable.’

Luria, who had been casting round with a fishing-line, wanted to speak directly to his friend. But he gazed at the profile alongside, closed and obstinate, and was certain that this wasn’t the right time.

One person who was able to take short views, and was actively doing so, was Tom Thirkill. That was a help, perhaps a necessity, in the political life. Writs had duly been issued and gossip was muffled.
Private Eye
had been daring enough to publish another attack. That had evoked a second writ. Thirkill’s lawyers said that it would double the damages. Thirkill might lack ultimate confidence, he might feel persecuted, but feeling persecuted made the adrenalin flow, and he became more active than ever. ‘The Lord,’ he said to colleagues, ‘hath delivered them…’ There was a major satisfaction in seeing enemies walk into a trap.

He had made a speech in the Commons on the Thursday before Kate’s party, the day of Lady Ashbrook’s reprieve: it was on the currency market, where he was in technical terms a master. He had received more admiration than ever before in Parliament, except from his own left wing. This was like an actor’s triumph. Nothing existed but the speech, the applause, the Press next day. It was easy, it was first nature, for Tom Thirkill to take short views.

His engagement book was dark with entries, and that also kept the adrenalin flowing. It did, however, mean that he had to look three weeks ahead before he could discharge an obligation. Thirkill had an obsession that he wouldn’t accept hospitality without returning it. He owed Humphrey Leigh a meal: Humphrey was no use to him, but the debt had to be paid. The same with Kate: she had to be paid off.

Thirkill consulted his chief political adviser, his only intimate. This was Mrs Armstrong, Stella Armstrong. The name was beginning to be known in inner circles in Westminster. She was a woman of Kate’s age. She was the one human being with whom Tom Thirkill had no gritty residue of suspicion. With her he became something like ingenuous or naïve. For some time in the Commons, there had been gossip about what their relations really were.

Yes, said Stella Armstrong, if he wouldn’t be happy unless he had wiped Humphrey and Kate off his obligations, he had better do so. What about turning the meal to some use? Lady Ashbrook – he had met her now – would she come? Most of his colleagues were remarkably snobbish; they would like to meet one of the last
grandes dames
. Further, you never knew what might happen about Susan. She talked as though Susan were her own daughter. He might get snubbed by the old lady, and snubs added to persecution; but she assumed that he would take worse snubs in the chase for anything that Susan wanted.

His expression clouded, his voice had gone gravel-rough. ‘I don’t know about that old woman,’ he said. Then he put on his firm fighting smile. Still, he might as well impress them. Every little helps; you never know, the jobs might be going round soon.

It would have to be a luncheon, Stella decided. She had heard that the old lady never went out to dinner. Luncheon at Eaton Square wouldn’t be physically difficult for her, if she chose to come at all. The first day Thirkill had free was Friday, 30 July; the House wasn’t likely to be sitting. So invitations went out, and they waited for Lady Ashbrook’s response. Stella Armstrong thought that he was tense with waiting, but that she was used to.

When Humphrey woke on Monday morning, a week after Kate’s party, a line of sunlight was bright between the curtains, and a breath of air freshened the room. It was half-past seven, and outside the Square was, as usual, very quiet. He didn’t need to hurry himself into consciousness, he could draw out the minutes, during which the only sound was a car starting some distance away. Then there was another sound, something unexpected in the middle of the great town, horses’ hooves slowly, precisely, walking.

Humphrey was used to this. It was soothing, it brought back vague memories of childhood. Actually, it was nothing more of an invocation than a couple of police horses being trained in London streets, of which those round about were the least frightening. He couldn’t hear much else from three floors up – perhaps the faintest patter of footsteps, the postman, a boy delivering morning papers.

Humphrey was still half-dozing. On a waft of morning air, the smell, just perceptible, of geraniums. The weekend had passed without incident, his ritual drink with Alec Luria on Saturday evening, the pub as sedate as it had ever been, on Sunday a lunch with old acquaintances out at Richmond. That was all. He had never been fond of the social life, now less than ever. He had nothing to do on the coming day.

As he lay dozing, there was a tap, a couple of impatient taps, on the bedroom door. The door opened – ‘Mr Humphrey! Mr Humphrey!’

His housekeeper, Mrs Burbridge, was standing beside the bed. She was a woman in her early seventies, blooming, healthy, as a rule unfussed. But she was not unfussed that morning.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Humphrey. It’s the foreign girl, Lady Ashbrook’s daily. I can’t make her out much. She’s asking for you. I’m afraid something’s happened to her ladyship.’

‘What has happened?’ Humphrey had come full awake.

‘I’m afraid she’s dead.’

Mrs Burbridge couldn’t tell him more. She found Maria incomprehensible, except that she was asking for Humphrey and seemed to want him to return with her to Lady Ashbrook’s house. Humphrey said that he would soon be ready, and shortly followed Mrs Burbridge downstairs.

Maria was standing in the hall, Mrs Burbridge with an arm around her shoulders. Maria was a sturdy young woman, not given to excitement. She wasn’t crying, but her face opened when she saw him and she broke into a stream of her own language. It is horrible, he thought she was saying, and then lost the rest. He had to tell her to speak slowly: he didn’t really understand Portuguese, but he would have to try.

‘She has been killed,’ said Maria, and crossed herself. Those words were clear, but Humphrey couldn’t believe it. A stroke he had been expecting, any sort of sudden death. Not this.

He questioned Maria, incredulously. How did she know the old lady had been killed? Was she certain? ‘You will see,’ Maria replied phlegmatically. ‘It is horrible. Her head. Her head.’

By this time, Humphrey had to believe. Suddenly, as with other violent happenings, it became certain, almost banal, like a piece of news, obviously true, which he had heard a long time before.

When did Maria discover this? Humphrey looked at his watch: it was nearly eight o’clock. Maria had gone into the drawing-room, to do the morning cleaning. There she was. You will see, Maria told Humphrey again. She had tried to telephone the police. She had got through to the station, but wasn’t sure that she had made them understand. Her English was so bad, she apologised. So she had come to Humphrey. She apologised again for giving so much trouble, but she had to find someone to talk to.

She had good nerves, Humphrey thought. Within minutes, after they had walked up the Square, they entered Lady Ashbrook’s drawing-room. Outside the house, the young woman had touched his sleeve and said that he must be prepared. It was a bad spectacle.

Inside the room, obliterating all else, was a smell that one didn’t forget. It wasn’t strong. It was sweet and light. If it had been another smell or, rather, a smell from another cause it would have been dominant, maybe, scarcely noticeable. If it had had another cause, it might not even have been nauseous. There were pleasant smells, just as sweet, just as corrupt.

Affected by the smell, his first sight of the room was blurred. There was a curtain drawn back, the light was bright, but for an instant his eyes were jarred. Chairs were overturned, drawers gaping, lamps, trays littered on the floor. It deadened him as though he were walking into a party with the noise full on. With peripheral vision he half-realised that some pictures had been torn down. Not the Boudin, not the Vlaminck. Then, or really in the same eye-flash, he saw Lady Ashbrook, and the confusion of the senses cleared away. As he looked, the smell seemed stronger. She was lying in front of her chair, which had been tipped on to its side. Her skirt had run up over the knees, bony knees above the thin fragile legs. Her head was raised higher than her shoulders, with some support, invisible to Humphrey, underneath. There was darkened blood on the carpet. Not much more than if glasses of wine had been spilled. He didn’t realise until later, but there were flecks of blood elsewhere, on furniture and up the wall behind her, pear-shaped drops of blood. There were also scraps of white. He realised none of that, for he was looking only at her head, he could look at nothing else. Her face was turned towards him and the door. The eyes were glaring open, the mouth wide open, too. That was not what transfixed him. In a wound on her temple there was a stirring. Later, he was told that this was a maggot, there already. That didn’t hold his gaze. Along the top of the head, running over hair and forehead, bisecting the forehead between the middle of the ears and projecting nine inches outwards, was a shaft. It wasn’t quite symmetrical above the forehead, but inclined slightly to her right side, and tilted a few degrees downwards. It might have been a new and novel form of hat – no, more hypnotising, a new-grown physiognomic feature.

By his side, Maria crossed herself once more. It was not until later in the morning, after the doctors arrived, that Humphrey understood that he had been looking at the handle of the hammer which Lady Ashbrook, for do-it-yourself purposes, kept in the tool-box about the room. The claws of the hammer had gone through the skull into the brain. Erect above the shaft stood the hammer-head.

Humphrey didn’t move. At last he said to Maria: ‘Well.’ He spoke in English, and brought out the most inadequate of all-purpose English words. ‘Well. There’s nothing we can do. I’d better use the telephone.’

In all the havoc, the telephone hadn’t been interfered with, nor Lady Ashbrook’s card of acquaintances’ numbers, nor her engagement book, open for that month. Absently Humphrey noticed in the space for 30 July: Thirkill, 36 Eaton Square, 1 p.m. She had accepted that invitation.

The number of the police station wasn’t on her card, but Humphrey remembered it. He spoke to the man on duty.

‘This is Humphrey Leigh. I’ve been in the station before. I am ringing from 72 Aylestone Square. Lady Ashbrook’s house. She’s been killed. Yes, murdered. Would you report it at once? Yes, she’s quite dead. I guess she’s been dead a day or so.’

When did Humphrey hear? A few minutes ago, said Humphrey, patiently, used to official enquiries. He had been a friend of the old lady’s, and her daily woman had called him. Is the daily woman a foreigner? Yes, Humphrey answered, and there was a sound of discovery at the other end. There had been a call at 7.46; we couldn’t catch the address. There was a radio car out making enquiries.

‘Tell him where it is.’ Humphrey was brisk. Any action was better than none. ‘I shall be here. And send another of your chaps round. This has to be cleared up–’

‘I get you, sir.’ That was a reply to authority: Humphrey, without thought, had dropped into a former tone of voice. ‘This is trouble all right. An officer will be with you in five minutes.’

Meanwhile, Humphrey was trying to reach Dr Perryman. There would be a police doctor round soon enough, no doubt, but she might as well have her own. Perryman was visiting a patient, but his secretary promised to use his bleep and pass the message on. ‘Make sure he’s told he can’t help. She’s dead. But when he has time I think he would like to see her.’

Inside the five minutes, a policeman arrived. Humphrey met him outside the drawing-room. He was a tall young man, comely, physically confident. He introduced himself as Detective Sergeant – and a surname Humphrey didn’t catch. The policeman told Maria, who had been standing on the stairs with Humphrey, that he would need to question her. Then he and Humphrey entered the shambles of a room. At first glance, he had let out a curse, but when Humphrey said, ‘There she is,’ and looked towards the body the young man became silent and stayed so. He stayed silent for so long that Humphrey started to speak, but then cut off. The man was retching.

Humphrey himself had felt qualms at the sight of that wooden growth. He was quick-nerved about emotional things, not specially squeamish about physical ones, and he had seen a good many bodies torn to pieces in war. Worse than seeing fragments of limbs and flesh, he had seen someone known to him cut in two, torso one way, the rest below the waist another. Like other men of his age, he had become hardened. Yet he had had to detach himself, become clinically cool, at the sight of the old lady’s head. This young man must have seen corpses, certainly suicides, casualties in accidents, maybe a murder victim, but now he couldn’t take it. He was gulping.

Humphrey said, ‘Come outside.’

As they reached the corridor, the detective sergeant was forcing himself back on duty. Humphrey asked his name again, again lost it, and in the multitude of policemen’s names in the near future never learned it. It could have been Robinson. His voice was like a man choking, but he gave his orders: ‘Nothing must be touched in there.’

‘Quite,’ said Humphrey.

‘Have either of you touched anything up to now?’

Humphrey translated to Maria, and she gave vigorous shakes of her head. She had confronted the sight in that room – the bad spectacle, as she kept calling it – with stronger intestines than the policeman’s, Humphrey thought, stronger than his own.

Humphrey said that he had touched nothing, except the telephone.

‘Really, you shouldn’t have used that.’ The young man was recovering himself. ‘Anyway, that’s done. Nothing else? I’ll have a man stationed outside until we’ve done all our stuff.’

‘Her doctor will probably be coming,’ Humphrey said.

‘He’ll have to keep his hands off, too. I don’t mind him having a look from the door.’