A Coat of Varnish (37 page)

‘Yes, we heard that. And after her death – did she tell you about that, too?’

‘She did.’

‘Who was to get anything?’

‘Loseby, that goes without saying. The main share. One or two others. None of them knew there was anything coming. This has to be kept dead secret, of course. In fact, I haven’t worked out a way to get it round–’

‘Anyway, you needn’t trouble yourself about that now,’ said Briers with emollient politeness.

Perryman wasn’t outfaced. With equal emollience, with mocking politeness, he said: ‘And you needn’t trouble yourselves about those people. They weren’t given the slightest expectations. And the sums would have been very small, at the most a few hundred pounds.’

‘This was all arranged in conversation?’ By now, Briers took that for granted.

‘That was the whole point. Completely uncheckable.’

‘Completely.’

Then Perryman added, as though willing to help: ‘There was one person who had further expectations. That was Lord Loseby.’

‘I think I should tell you straight away,’ Briers remarked without stress or inflection, ‘that for our purposes we are not interested in Lord Loseby.’

Poised and unaffected, voice slightly more haughty, Perryman replied: ‘I suppose that I have to assume you know your job, Chief Superintendent?’

‘Perhaps it might be easier if you do.’ With the same civility, Briers went on: ‘Well, I think that’s as far as we need go about the financial question. I don’t know whether you agree, George…,’ he turned to Flamson.

‘We’ve got quite a lot, chief. We know where to get some more.’

‘You see, Doctor, that’s all going to be a present for the tax boys, as I said. My guess is that they won’t worry about Lady Ashbrook’s income. That wouldn’t be worth time and trouble. But they will have to worry about the estate duties.’

There was a spell of silence, not long, a kind of deliberate doldrums. Then Briers said across the table: ‘How much money is there left of that American fund?’

‘I just don’t know.’

‘I can’t take that.’

‘It happens to be the hard truth.’

As though imitating Briers, Perryman was also deliberately quiet for an interval. He went on, pleased to be prosaic: ‘The other two were good at keeping their mouths shut.’

‘You must have a very good idea.’ Briers was showing an edge of temper.

‘I have told you, no.’

‘We can clear that up in our own time.’ Briers went on: ‘Perhaps you can tell me something else. How much did you stand to get out of the business yourself?’

Perryman stared past him, eyes distended.

‘How much?’

‘I was trying to think. The old lady discussed that with me, of course. She didn’t want me to be out of pocket. It took a certain amount of time, and it was a responsibility, naturally. So she suggested that I was entitled to a small commission. Lady Ashbrook used to mention sums of two or three thousand, that’s what an agent might reasonably expect.’

‘Not much,’ Flamson interjected.

‘She was careful with her money. O’Brien was careful with it, too. I was just doing a friendly service, that’s all.’

‘There’s no proof of any of this, of course?’ Briers said.

‘There can’t be.’

‘Then when she died? What did she tell you to keep for yourself?’

‘Oh, nothing very grand. Loseby was to get £20,000 in dribs and drabs. The other gifts didn’t matter. And I might have another agent’s fee from what was left.’

‘And you’ve told us that you’ve no idea what that might come to.’

‘None at all. I didn’t imagine it would make much difference to me.’

‘Of course you didn’t.’ Without changing his tone, Briers went on: ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to drop all that. We shouldn’t be wasting our time here on a piece of tax fiddling, you know.’

‘What should we be wasting our time on, then?’ Deliberately Perryman looked at his watch. It was after ten. The interview had been going on for four hours.

Briers said: ‘There is a matter of murder.’ Voices told little, faces less. A tape recording, a photograph, would have shown no more open emotion than if they had been talking about the National Theatre.

‘I needn’t tell you what all this is in aid of, need I?’ Briers was speaking carefully and slowly. ‘It’s the murder we want to ask you about. I don’t have to tell you that.’

‘I can’t pretend to be absolutely astonished.’ Perryman said it with superior, condescending, as it were benevolent, sarcasm.

‘I don’t have to tell you why we’ve been paying all this attention to the money. I can leave that thought with you, just for now.’

Briers pressed out a cigarette end. The ashtray was littered with stubs. He relaxed into silence. Then, as though at ease, not insistently, he said: ‘What about yourself? You could have killed her, couldn’t you?’

‘I’m not sure what that means.’ Perryman’s calm hadn’t broken.

‘Perhaps you will be sure. Sooner or later. You can’t give us any account of your movements that night. I know, that could happen to anyone. But, for all you have told us, you could have been in that house. Agreed?’

‘I can’t prove that I wasn’t. Agreed. In theory I could have been.’

‘I said before, that could apply to others. But you had access to her, didn’t you? You had your own front-door key!’

‘I thought I’d made it plain,’ Perryman threw back his head, ‘that I was a close friend.’

‘You were also her doctor. That puts you in a special position. That could give you certain advantages, couldn’t it?’

‘I don’t know what that means.’

‘I think you do. It ought to be clear. You’re an intelligent man. If it’s a question of killing an old lady, a doctor has certain advantages. Particularly if she happens to be his patient. She’s used to him, isn’t she, she’s used to his hands?’

‘In theory that would be true.’

‘You have good hands, Doctor.’ They were tented in front of Perryman’s chest, long-fingered with filbert nails, firm strong thumbs.

‘So I’ve been told.’

‘And you’d have another advantage. You’d know exactly where to put those hands, without fuss. Of course, you’d have had to explain beforehand why you were wearing gloves. But that would be no trouble to a smooth talker. You could have been treating another patient with an infection earlier on that night.’

Perryman smiled. ‘Yes, a doctor could have done all that. I really do congratulate you on your imagination. Yes, it could have happened, in theory. The only trouble is that it didn’t.’

To that last flick Briers paid no notice. He went on. ‘There’s one thing about that murder that we still don’t quite understand. A doctor would have known that he’d killed her, of course. Then why would he smash her skull in? Unnecessary. Risky. He was lucky not to collect some blood. Unless he did, and took precautions we haven’t traced so far. Anyway, if he’d thought twice, he wouldn’t have done it. He wouldn’t have picked up that hammer. Naturally, we know better than anyone that a man often goes mad after he’s killed someone. There are more nasty reminders of that than we reckon to talk about. But we didn’t find any this time. Never mind, it mightn’t have been a fit of madness. Maybe an attempt to make it look like a killing by a brute, just a dumb thief. The same with the way the room was left. That was a bit of make believe; we saw that as soon as we walked in.’

‘Another effort of your imagination, I take it,’ Perryman commented.

Briers switched away. Abruptly he said: ‘In the summer, you must have thought that the old lady was going to die soon?’

‘Not so positively as that.’ Perryman’s reply was sharp, competent, less measured than when he was under direct attack. ‘My clinical judgment was that it was rather more likely than not. My clinical judgment turned out wrong.’

‘If it had been right, she would have been dead by now. And you would have been coping with the dispositions just as you are at present.’

‘That must be true.’

‘And, as there had been no murder, no one would have thought twice about it. The money would have come in according to plan?’

‘Naturally.’

‘But since your judgment didn’t prove right she might have lived for years?’

‘She could have done.’

‘And that was a reason for impatience?’ Without stress, Briers was switching back.

‘It could have been. It could have been,’ said Perryman. ‘On someone’s part.’

‘It must have been a shock to hear that she was going to survive.’

‘If someone was impatient, it might have been.’ Perryman didn’t change his tone. ‘I saw no sign of it. I suppose I didn’t have the right acquaintances.’

Briers said, as though brooding: ‘If you had been able to do anything to help her survive – you being her doctor, of course – you’d have done it, wouldn’t you?’

‘Naturally.’

‘Whatever else you were thinking about?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Professional duty is a very strange thing. You’d agree with that, wouldn’t you?’

That exchange had for an instant brought a touch of sympathy between them, which on and off had been latent much of the night. Not liking, for there was none, on Briers’ side; something more like revulsion. There was also a feeling more surreptitious and closer than liking. He knew that he would get no farther that night. They passed into long passages of repetition, the money dealings, the way the murder could have been done. Briers wasn’t dissatisfied. He had to subdue optimism, the optimism he warned others against. This man wouldn’t break, but was going to give. Briers suddenly remarked across the table that they had had enough for one day, some of his colleagues would be ready to ask more questions in the morning, and said a polite goodnight.

A little later, the background squad assembled like a team wishing to have an inquest on the day’s play. They could see that Briers was forgetting the tiredness of one who had been exuding energy for hours. They were counting on the time when they had the case to their credit, another job cleaned up. They had a bottle of whisky on the table in the Murder Room, and someone said: ‘It’s going to be all right, isn’t it, guv?’ That wasn’t a question. There was collective well-being in the air. Briers, who had sometimes suffered from his own hopes, said: ‘I’ll believe that when I see it. I’ll believe that when I see the jury coming down for us.’

‘You’re touching wood.’

‘It doesn’t do any harm to touch wood,’ Briers said.

The following evening, while the second pair of detectives were at work questioning Perryman half a mile away, Kate and Humphrey were sitting on the sofa in his drawing-room. She had recently come up from the kitchen, having cooked him a savoury, now on the little table by his side. It was a comfortable domestic picture, sardonic observers might have said. With changes of menu, it happened most nights of the week.

Yet in form their relation was unaltered. Kate hadn’t made the break. She worked at her hospital, provided for Monty, then gave Humphrey the attention of the most vigilant of lovers. She wanted to give him pleasure, and got pleasure from doing so. Otherwise she didn’t want anything for herself. Except, as Humphrey told her with the liberty of his kind of love, her own way. For they were living on her terms, not his.

She couldn’t bring herself to leave Monty – to leave him to his helpless self. She thought she was realistic, more than most. She wasn’t sentimental. But she couldn’t bring herself to make the clean and clinical break. Habit was too strong, maybe. Or the comfort – not so noble as it might have seemed to one who flattered herself more – of having someone who needed to cling.

It didn’t sound realistic. Yet perhaps it was. Kate had announced to Humphrey that it wasn’t time for the final move. They settled down to go on as they were. She was half-living with him. It was a singular kind of happiness. After all, there were more kinds of happiness than complacent or self-important persons thought. As for Kate, she positively enjoyed the activity and the effort, though sometimes she had daydreams as to where she and Humphrey would live when they were free.

Did Monty know? He could scarcely have helped knowing, both Kate and Humphrey thought. She didn’t conceal her movements, she didn’t volunteer confessions or explanations, but she wouldn’t lie. Probably, Humphrey suggested to her, Monty both knew and didn’t know, that state in which many existed when living with a suspicion they didn’t want to accept. Knowing and not-knowing: he was being treated just as he had always been, everything in order, kindness, cheerfulness, money coming into the house, all paid for. While he continued with his thoughts. In spite of his superbity, he might possess a kind of self-protective cunning. If he had confronted her, it would mean a chance for her to break for good. So Humphrey thought to himself; but he believed that that view of Monty would still bring her pain.

That evening, sitting in peace on the sofa, Kate was following another thought of his. She knew that, like the detectives themselves, he was excited about the interrogation. This excitement wasn’t a special compliment to human nature. It was like that which spread round Lady Ashbrook’s acquaintances when they were waiting for news as to whether she was mortally ill. People – it didn’t matter whether they were good-natured within the human limits – felt their pulses beating stronger at the prospect of someone else’s calamity. Yes, Humphrey was as good-natured as most men, Kate thought; she had the best of reasons for realising that. But, loving him, she knew that he was carried away, half-absentminded, by the thought of those interrogations. She knew, too, that he had spoken to Frank Briers that afternoon. She was sure that Humphrey wished he were taking part, and was envious.

If he had known about the background squad later that night, he might have been more envious. That was the inquest after the second session. Morale was high. It was like being at election headquarters when the swing was beginning to look certain. The well-being was almost palpable; or at least odd pats on shoulders really were so. Briers, lifted with the rest, making up his mind about tactics, had intervals when he could forget other cares.