Death and the Chaste Apprentice (23 page)

His voice faded into silence, but then he looked wildly round at the other three men. “I mean,
why not
?” he almost cried.

They didn't tell him. They left a pause, and then Dundy said quietly: “I imagine it hasn't been easy.”

Brad Mallory smiled sadly. “Oh, no. It hasn't been easy. As you've seen, he's very vain and childish. It's almost as if he stopped growing up when . . . I'm used to artists who view the world as revolving around themselves. That's usual. And they are
artists.
Singh is a baby. At the center there is . . . a hole. Sweet nothing. And he can be cruel, too. To defenseless things. And he eats sweets. . . .”

“Eats sweets?” asked Nettles, mystified.

“I tell him not to. Already he's getting very chubby. If he becomes grossly fat, he will remind people of nothing so much as the old castrati, and then someone will ask questions. I tell him this over and over, but he takes no notice. . . . He has no gratitude.”

“Gratitude?”

“You think he shouldn't have? Maybe. Anyway, he has none. I have this fear that in two or three years, when he has made his name, he will throw me over. All the financial gains will go to someone else. And I'll have nothing to threaten him with to keep him faithful. Any revelation about his . . . state would tarnish me much more than it would tarnish him. No, it has not been easy.”

“I must say I'm rather glad to hear that,” said Iain Dundy briskly. “Now, let's come to the night of the murder, sir. Let's hear exactly what happened?”

“Oh, God.” Bradford Mallory went white. “It was a nightmare. It needed all my little . . . queer mannerisms to carry it off. . . . After I'd telephoned, I went back to the
Town Hall to hear Singh's arias. He was brilliant, but I could hardly concentrate. What was I going to do? Was I going to offer him money? If so, how much? Was it possible to brazen things out? Because, after all, I didn't see how he could
know
.”

“You left the concert as soon as Singh was finished, did you? When was that?”

“About ten past eight, as I told you before. I was back at the Saracen by a quarter past. I came to this room, put a flannel over my face, lit a cigarette, and put it straight out. It was so
damnable,
after all my work, and just when it was coming to fruition. But I hadn't made up my mind what to do when I went along and knocked at his door. That was about twenty past eight or so, as you said. If only I'd
decided
to face it out or
decided
to pay up. I put up a front, but I think Capper could see from the moment I walked into the room that I was beaten. He behaved as if I was a mouse he'd brought in and was preparing to torment.”

“What was he like?”

“Oh—
horrible.
Rubbing his hands with glee, making barroom jokes, leering . . . He was quite disgusting. I tried to face it out, to say there was nothing to it, but the mere fact that I was there told him that wasn't true. He said a medical examination could prove it one way or another. He said he had a good mate on the
Daily Grub.
I could believe it. It's just the paper Des Capper would know someone from. He said it was the sort of story that paper would love, and he was right there: salacious, voyeuristic, anti-art, and the racial overtones wouldn't have come amiss—they could make something of them. I can just see the headlines. They'd have gloated for days over the sick tastes of opera lovers who could watch a nonman who sang like a woman. . . . All this time he was rubbing his hands and leering and making elephantine innuendos.
My God, he deserved to die. I shouldn't say that, but he did.”

“What happened next?”

“I offered money, of course. That seemed to delight him even more. It was me wriggling on the hook. His hook. He positively chortled. It wasn't money he was after, he kept saying. It was to get even. I was quite bewildered. I asked him why he wanted to get even with me. What had I done? Or was it Singh he wanted to get even with? He said he had one or two little scores to settle against both of us, but it was neither, and so there was nothing in the world I could do about it. I just didn't understand. How could revealing Singh's secret get him even with anyone other than Singh or me? He was rubbing his hands and chortling to himself. I just didn't know what to do. It was like being in a maze.”

“What
did
you do?”

“What could I? I kept thrashing around in my mind: Could I explain why I'd brought Singh over, trained him? Would he understand? Was there anything he wanted besides money? He was positively gleeful that there was nothing I could do: ‘It's a very unfortunate position for you, Mr. Mallory,' he kept saying, ‘caught up in a quarrel that's not your own. I'm afraid there's just no way you can prevent me making a splash of it.' He was loving it, of course. . . . Normally I'm quite tough. You're quite right about my little mannerisms; they've become a cover. If you deal with singers all the time, you've got to be tough, believe me. But this situation was beyond me. In the end, with his standing there grinning at me as I wriggled, I just turned and walked out.”

There was silence in the room. “Are you telling me that you didn't kill him?” asked Dundy.

Mallory's face was suffused by a hopeless, beseeching expression. “Of course I didn't kill him. I knew there was
no chance of your believing me; that's why I didn't even try to tell you part of the story. I knew I probably wouldn't believe it myself if I were in your shoes. But it's the truth. I'm not the killing type.”

“When you left the room, he was still alive?”

“Yes!”

“What time was this?”

“About a quarter to nine. The Interval was still on— I remember hearing talking and laughter coming up from the Shakespeare Bar.”

“And you never went back to the flat?”

Brad Mallory swallowed. “I went back to the flat. I never went into it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I went back to my room. It's just along the corridor, as you know. I lay down on the bed and tried to think. I was desperate for a way out, but there was none. Even in a maze you know there
is
a way out, but now it seemed as though I'd been put down in the middle of one which had had its way out blocked. But—I don't know—perhaps I'm a congenital optimist; perhaps I don't like admitting defeat. I convinced myself I hadn't pushed the money solution hard enough. Perhaps he was just playing with me, I thought, and was really after money all the time. Everyone responds to money, I thought, if you offer enough—and we hadn't even mentioned specific sums. I decided to try again.”

“What time was this?”

“Just about nine. I saw the news headlines, downed a quick scotch, and went along that damned corridor again. My hand was just knocking the first knock at Capper's door when it struck me there were low voices inside. And the moment I finished knocking—”

“Yes?”

“I heard a cry—a grunt—and then a heavy thump.”

“What did you do?”

“I ran. I knew then that someone had killed him. I ran back to my room and thought over what the hell I should do. For God's sake, I'm not stupid. I knew then that somebody was going to suspect me of murder.”

His face was so agonized that it was almost possible to believe him. From Singh's bedroom came the sound of a high soprano voice assuring him that a spoonful of sugar would make the medicine go down.

T
HE LAST THING
Dundy did before he left the suite was caution Brad Mallory not to leave the hotel without getting police permission first. When the three of them were out in the corridor, Charlie noticed a look of dissatisfaction on Dundy's face, a look of niggling doubt. It disappointed him, but he respected the man's greater experience. Dundy walked on but paused at the little dark alcove where the telephone was. There was a sofa there, and an easy chair. Dundy took the latter and sent Nettles to the kitchens for three coffees. Then he took out a cigarette, lit it—the first time Charlie had seen him smoke—and soon began leafing through his notebook. The three of them sipped strong, hot coffee, and all of them kept silent. Charlie was wondering why Dundy was unsatisfied with Mallory as murderer and what were the consequences for the case if his story was believed. Nettles was somehow simultaneously thinking when his wife and new baby would be home and what would be the ideal side for England to field against the West Indies in the first Test. It was a
companionable, not a strained, silence. After twenty minutes or so, Dundy's expression of dissatisfaction began to lift.

“You believe him, don't you?” said Charlie.

The disappointment in his voice was palpable. It had been his brilliant deduction that had led them to Mallory, and it should have been crowned by the coup of his arrest.

“I suppose I shouldn't,” said Dundy slowly. “We wouldn't have any difficulty in making one hell of a good case against him. All I've got on the other side is instinct.”

“Instinct about—?”

“Character, I suppose. I just don't feel he has it in him to commit murder. Oh, I grant you he's tougher than he's been pretending. His job proves that. And the motive is there all right. I believe what he says about Singh's career being ruined is true. It would be destroyed by the popular press. There might be a few recordings, because that's closed-door stuff, but a stage career? I doubt it. I suspect that there is one thing Mallory has lied about. I think it may be that he did “choose” Singh, did pick out the boy with the best voice and the best appearance, and then have him “done.” And if that is so, he has a motive whether or not Singh's career would be ruined—because sure as hell
his
would be. The papers would crucify him. So there's no doubt whatever about motive. But guts, courage, bottle, nerve—call it what you will. I don't think he has it to the sort of degree that murder demands. I still think he's basically a gadfly, a dilettante. When he shed all those gay mannerisms, there somehow—how shall I put it?—there wasn't much left. I try to square him with all I've ever learned in my life about killers, and all I've ever read about them, and I can't.”

“But where does that leave us, sir?” asked Nettles. “Back at square one?”

“No, of course not,” said Dundy crossly. “
Think
, man. Surely you can see that if we believe him it alters our whole perspective on the case.”

“Time,” said Charlie.

“Exactly.”

They all three sat thinking about that for some moments. Downstairs, time had just been called. Dundy stubbed out his second cigarette and got up.

“We'll go down.”

In the Shakespeare there were a few stragglers left. Newspapers were strewn around on the tables, mostly turned to the arts pages, and a collection of singers and orchestral players were laughing over an article in the
Times
in which Bernard Levin confessed that he was unable to take Donizetti seriously. At the sight of the policemen, they drank up and left. How they knew they were policemen was no mystery: In the Saracen at the time, it was a fair bet. Dundy noted that among the disappearing party was Krister Kroll, the tenor. He let him go and surveyed the rapidly emptying room with satisfaction. Then he went to the bar, where Dawn and the new temporary manager were tidying up the lunchtime debris.

“Ah, you would be the superintendent,” said the new manager, coming round from behind the bar, his manner somewhere between the friendly and the ingratiating. He seemed a pleasant enough young man, but people in any way connected with the licensing trade never quite knew how to behave with policemen.

“That's right,” said Dundy. “You've been got here quickly. Getting things round?”

The manager's face assumed a serious expression. “Oh, officially, there's nothing to get round,
Un
officially we may admit that perhaps the best appointment may not have been made last time, that there may be a few bridges to mend.”

“I think I might like a brief word, eventually, on how that appointment came to be made.”

“Of course. I was briefed about that before I was sent over. Oh, by the way, this came this morning from headquarters.”
He drew from his pocket a Saracen's Head envelope and handed it to Dundy. “We didn't think there was any need to bother about fingerprints since it had been through the postal mill. It's Capper's handwriting, isn't it? Sent the day he died, but by second-class mail.”

There was no letter. What Dundy drew out of the envelope was a newspaper clipping. It was the medical column of one of the newspapers they had found in Capper's flat. It dealt, in laymen's terms, with a newly developed treatment for spastics.

“I think you'll find the appointment quite understandable when you know the facts,” the temporary manager was nervously saying. “It's far from suspicious. In fact, redounding to the credit—”

“Right,” said Dundy, cutting him short. “But before we go into that—”

“Yes? Anything we can do to help, of course.”

“—I'd like to try a little experiment with Dawn here.”

Dawn looked up, surprised. She was much more alert today, rested and in almost sparkling form. She had, of course, been very much the center of attention both at home and in the hotel. Now she looked puzzled but intrigued.

“I don't see—”

“You don't have to. It's quite simple, and something you're used to doing. Now, I want you to fill a tray with dirty glasses—or clean ones, if you haven't got enough—just as you did on the night of the murder.”

“We do generally prefer to wash them by hand, Superintendent,” said the fair-haired manager, then seemed to realize the fatuity of this remark.