Original Sin (3 page)

Mandy went over to it and closed her hand round it as if it were an icon. She said, 'Is this the tape? Is it a list? Do you want it tabulated?'

Miss Etienne regarded her for a moment in silence, then she said, /es, tabulate it. And two copies. You can use the word processor in Miss Blackett's office.'

And in that moment Mandy knew that she had the job.

15

2

Fifteen minutes earlier Gerard Etienne, chairman and managing director of Peverell Press, was leaving the boardroom to return to his office on the ground floor. Suddenly he stopped, stepped back into the shadows, delicate-footed as a cat, and stood watching from behind the balustrade. Below him in the hall a girl was slowly pirouetting, her eyes upward to the ceiling. She was wearing thigh-length black boots flared at the top, a short tight fawn skirt and a velvet jacket in a dull red. One thin and delicate arm was raised t.o hold on her head a remarkable hat. It seemed to be made of red felt and was wide-brimmed, turned up at the front and decorated with an extraordinary array of objects: flowers, feathers, strips of satin and lace, even small fragments of glass. As she turned it flashed and gleamed and glittered. She should, he thought, have looked ridiculous, the peaked childish face half-hidden by untidy swathes of dark hair, topped by such a grotesque confection. Instead she looked enchanting. He found himself smiling, almost laughing, and was suddenly seized with a madness he hadn't felt since he was twenty-one, the urge to rush down the wide staircase, sweep her into his arms and dance with her across the marble floor, out through the front door and to the rim of the glittering river. She had finished her slow turn and followed Miss Blackett across the hall. He stood for a moment savouring this upsurge of folly which, it seemed to him, had nothing to do with sex but the need to hold distilled a memory of youth, of early loves, of laughter, of freedom from responsibility, of sheer animal delight in the world of the senses. None of it had any part in his life now. He was still smiling as he waited until the hall was clear and then slowly descended to his office. Ten minutes later the door opened and he recognized his sister's footsteps. Without looking up he said: 'Who is the child in the hat?' 'The hat?' For a moment she seemed not to understand, then she said: 'Oh, the hat. Mandy Price from the secretarial agency.' There was an odd note in her voice and he turned, giving her his full attention. He said, 'Claudia, what's happened?'

16

'Sonia Clements is dead. Suicide.' 'Where?'

q-Iere. In the little archives office. The girl and I found her. We were fetching one of Gabriel's tapes.'

ffhat girl found her?' He paused and added, qSrhere is she now?'

'I've told you, in the little archives office. We didn't touch the body. Why should we?'

'I mean where is the child?'

'Next door with Blackie working on the tape. Don't waste your pity. She wasn't alone and there isn't any blood. That generation is tough. She didn't blink an eye. All she worried about was getting the job.'

/ou're sure it was suicide?'

'Of course. She left this note. It's open but I haven't read it.'

She handed over the envelope then walked to the window and stood looking out. After a couple of seconds he slid out the flap and drew the paper carefully from the envelope, then read aloud. '"I am sorry to cause a nuisance but this seemed the best room to use. Gabriel will probably be the one to find me and he's too familiar with death to be shocked. Now that I live alone I might not have been discovered at home until I began to stink and I find that one has the need to preserve some dignity, even in death. My affairs are in order, and I have written to my sister. I am under no obligation to give a reason for my act, but in case anyone is interested it is simply that I prefer annihilation to continued existence. It is a reasonable choice and one which we are all entitled to make."'

He said: 'Well that's clear enough, and in her own hand. How did she do it?'

'With drugs and drink. There isn't much mess, as I said.'

'Have you phoned the police?'

The police? I haven't had time yet. I came straight to you. And is it really necessary Gerard? Suicide isn't a crime. Can't we just ring Dr Frobisher?'

He said curtly, 'I don't know whether it's necessary but it's

certainly expedient. We don't want any doubts about this death.' 'Doubts?' she said. 'Doubts? Why should there be doubts?'

She had lowered her voice and now they were almost whispering. Almost imperceptibly they moved further from the partition towards the window.

17

He said: 'Gossip then, rumours, scandal. We can phone the police from here. There's no point in going through the switchboard. If they bring her down in the lift we can probably get her out of the building before the staff know what's happened. There's George of course. I suppose that the police had better come in by that door. George will

have to be told to keep his mouth shut. Where is the agency girl now?' 'I've told you. Next door in Blackie's room, doing her typing test.'

'Or, more likely, describing to Blackie and anyone else who comes by how she was taken upstairs to get a tape and found a dead body.'

'I've instructed them both to say nothing until we've told all the staff. Gerard, if you think you can keep this quiet even for a couple of hours, forget it. There'll be an inquest, publicity. And they'll have to bring her down by the stairs. You can't possibly fit a body bag on a stretcher in the lift. My God, though, this is all we needed! Coming on top of the other business it's going to be great for staff morale.'

There was a moment's silence in which neither moved towards the telephone. Then she looked at him and asked: fi/Vhen you sacked her last Wednesday, how did she take it?'

'She didn't kill herself because I gave her the push. She was a rational woman, she knew she had to go. She must have known that from the day I took over here. I always made it clear that I thought we had one editor too many, that we could farm out the work to a freelance.'

'But she's fifty-three. It wouldn't have been easy for her to get

another job. And she's been here for twenty-four years.'

'Part-time.'

'Part-time but working almost full-time. TI-ds place was her life.' 'Claudia, that's sentimental nonsense. She had an existence outside these walls. What the hell has that to do with it anyway? Either she was needed here or she wasn't.'

'And is that how you broke it to her? No longer needed.'

'I wasn't brutal, if that's what you're implying. I told her that I proposed to employ a freelance for some of the non-fiction editing and that her post was therefore superfluous. I said that although she didn't legally qualify for maximum redundancy pay we would come to some financial arrangement.'

'Arrangement? What did she say?'

'She said that it wouldn't be necessary. She would make her own arrangements.'

8

'And she has. Apparently with distalgesic and a bottle of Bulgarian cabernet. Well at least she's saved us money but, by God, I'd rather have paid out than be faced with this. I know I ought to feel pity for her. I suppose I shall when I've got over the shock. Just now it isn't easy.'

'Claudia, it's pointless to reopen all those old arguments. It was necessary to sack her and I sacked her. That had nothing to do with her death. I did what had to be done in the interests of the firm and at the time you agreed. Neither you nor I can be blamed for her suicide and her death has nothing to do with the other mischief here either.' He paused then said: 'Unless of course she was the one responsible.'

She didn't miss the sudden note of hope in his voice. So he was more worried than he would admit. She said bitterly: 'That would be a neat way out of our troubles, wouldn't it? But how could she have been, Gerard? She was off sick, remember, when the Stilgoe proofs were tampered with and visiting an author in Brighton when we lost the illustrations for the Guy Fawkes book. No, she's in the clear.'

'Of course. Yes, I'd forgotten. Look, I'll ring the police now while you go round the office and explain what's happened. That's less dramatic than getting everyone together for a general announcement. Tell them to stay in their rooms until the body has been removed.'

She said slowly: 'There is one thing. I think I was the last person to see her alive.'

'Someone had to be.'

'It was last night, just after seven. I was working late. I came out of the cloakroom on the first floor and saw her going up the stairs. She was carrying a bottle of wine and a glass.'

'You didn't ask her what she was doing?'

'Of course I didn't. She wasn't a junior typist. For all I knew she was taking the wine to the archives room to do a spot of secret drinking. If so it was hardly my concern. I thought it odd that she was

working so late, but that's all.'

'Did she see you?'

'I don't think so. She didn't look round.' 'And no one else was about?' 'Not at that hour. I was the last.'

Fhen say nothing about it. It isn't relevant. It doesn't help.'

'I did have a feeling, though, that there was something strange about her. She did look - well - furtive. She was almost scurrying.'

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'That's hindsight. You didn't check on the building before you locked up?' 'I looked in her room. The light wasn't on. There was nothing there, no coat, no bag. I suppose she'd locked them in her cupboard. Obviously I thought she'd left and gone home.' 'You can say that at the inquest, but no more. Don't mention seeing her earlier. It might only lead the coroner to ask why you didn't check the top of the building.' 'Why should I?' 'Exactly.' 'But Gerard, if I'm asked when I saw her last...' 'Then lie. But for God's sake, Claudia, lie convincingly and stick with the lie.' He moved over to the desk and lifted the receiver. 'I suppose I'd better dial 999. It's odd, but this is the first time in my memory that we've ever had the police at Innocent House.' She turned from the window and looked full at him. 'Let's hope that it's the last.'

3

In the outer office Mandy and Miss Blackett sat each at her word processor, each typing, eyes fixed on the screen. Neither spoke. At first Mandy's fingers had refused to work, trembling uncertainly over the keys as if the letters had been inexplicably transposed and the whole keyboard had become a meaningless jumble of symbols. But she clasped her hands tightly in her lap for half a minute and by an effort of will brought the shaking under control, and when she actually began typing the familiar skill took over and all was well. From time to time she glanced quickly at Miss Blackett. The woman was obviously deeply shocked. The large face with its marsupial cheeks and small, rather obstinate mouth, was so white that Mandy feared that at any moment she would slump forward over the keyboard in a faint.

It was over half an hour since Miss Etienne and her brother had left. Within ten minutes of closing the door Miss Etienne had put her head round it and had said: 'I've asked Mrs Demery to bring you some tea. It's been a shock for both of you.'

The tea had come within minutes, carried in by a red-haired woman in a flowered apron who had put down the tray on top of a filing cabinet with the words: 'I'm not supposed to talk so I won't. No harm in telling you, though, that the police have just arrived. That's quick work. No doubt they'll be wanting tea now.' She had then disappeared, as if aware that there was more excitement to be had outside the room than in.

Miss Blackett's office was an ill-proportioned room, too narrow for its height, the discordancy emphasized by the splendid marble fireplace with its formal patterned frieze, the heavy mantelshelf supported by the heads of two sphinxes. The partition, wooden for the bottom three feet with paned glass above, cut across one of the narrow arched windows as well as bisecting a lozenge-shaped decoration on the ceiling. Mandy thought that if the large room had had to be divided, it could have been done with more sensitivity to the architecture, not to mention Miss Blackett's convenience. This way it gave the impression

that she was grudged even enough space in which to work.

Another but different oddity was the long snake in, striped green velvet curled between the handles of the two top drawers of the steel filing cabinets. Its bright button eyes were crowned with a minute top hat and its forked tongue in red flannel hung from a soft open mouth lined with what looked like pink silk. Mandy had seen similar snakes before; her gran had had one. They were intended to be laid along the bottom of doors to exclude draughts, or wound round the handles to keep the door ajar. But it was a ridiculous object, a kind of kid's toy, and hardly one she had expected to see in Innocent House. She would have liked to have asked Miss Blackett about it but Miss Etienne had told them not to talk and Miss Blackett was obviously interpreting this as prohibiting all speech except about work.

The minutes passed silently. Mandy would shortly be at the end of her tape. Then Miss Blackett, looking up, said: 'You can stop that now. I'll give you some dictation. Miss Etienne wanted me to test your shorthand.'

She took one of the firm's catalogues from her desk drawer, handed Mandy a notebook, moved her chair beside her and began reading in a low voice, hardly moving her almost bloodless lips. Mandy's fingers automatically formed the familiar hieroglyphics but her mind took in few of the details of the forthcoming non-fiction list. From time to time Miss Blackett's voice faltered and Mandy knew that she too was listening to the sounds outside. After the initial sinister silence, they could now hear footsteps, half-imagined whispering, and then louder footfalls echoing on the marble and confident masculine voices.

Miss Blackett, her eyes on the door, said tonelessly: 'Perhaps you'd read it back now?'

Mandy read back her shorthand faultlessly. Again there was a silence. Then the door opened and Miss Etienne came in. She said: 'The police have arrived. They are just waiting for the police surgeon and then they'll be taking Miss Clements away. You'd better stay here until it's all clear.' She looked at Miss Blackett. 'Have you finished the test?'