War Damage (31 page)

Murray's officers backed up his story. The suspect had fired first. Murray's life had been threatened.

He'd walked back up the hill. Regine was still leaning against the tree where he'd left her.

‘What happened? What happened?'

‘He tried to shoot me. I had to return fire.' He put his arm round her and slowly they walked back the way they'd come, but when they reached Downshire Hill, she moved out of the circle of his arm.

‘You killed him, didn't you.' She put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh God – I …' She didn't finish the sentence, but just stood staring. Finally she said: ‘I need to be on my own. The shock …' She turned and walked slowly away up the road.

He started after her. ‘Wait – please – Regine –'

She didn't turn, but made a gesture with her hand, as if pushing him away.

* * * * *

He telephoned her the next day to ask her when they could meet. He wanted to take her out to dinner, but she said it would be better if they just met for a drink and suggested a quiet, exclusive pub near St James's Square. It was near Noel Valentine's art gallery, she said.

He brought their drinks to the table where she was seated. Beer cost a packet here … he'd never be able to keep her in the manner to which she was accustomed …

‘Thank you.' She smiled through the scrap of mesh veil that fell from the ridiculous little hat perched on her glowing curls.

He took her hand. ‘You'll have read the official version in the papers,' he began.

She moved her hand away to loosen her astrakhan coat. ‘Official version? Isn't – wasn't that what really happened?'

‘Yes, of course, but – well – my boss wasn't pleased. He naturally wanted an arrest, a trial, a conviction. He feels a bit cheated. He feels a case is never properly closed until he's had the satisfaction of having it fully tested in the courts and reported in the press.'

Regine sipped her sherry. ‘I'm so grateful for all you've done. It's such a tremendous relief – and yet I can't quite believe he's actually dead. You can't possibly know how terribly anxious I've been. But that wasn't quite what I expected.'

He slid closer to her. He wanted to put his arm round her. ‘You do realise he had Buckingham murdered and then killed the man who did it?'

She nodded slowly.

‘I had to do it,' he murmured, ‘just think what a trial would have meant for you.'

It had been a result, but not the way Plumer had wanted. No gratifying headlines; no impressive appearance in the witness box. The execution of a suspect who'd resisted arrest was theoretically justifiable – just about – because he'd threatened the life of an officer and had fired the first shot; nevertheless a Chicago-style shoot-out between police and gangsters on Hampstead Heath was hardly the right sort of publicity. And even given the provocation, even given the fact that it could be passed off as accidental, it didn't look good for a copper to shoot a suspect. Plumer, instead of being wreathed in glory, had been quietly reprimanded. Plumer in turn blamed Murray for botching the arrest. Murray's promotion, already overdue, was doubtful. A tearful Irene had asked if that meant they couldn't afford to get married now. From Murray's point of view this was the only mitigating factor; he couldn't bear the thought of marrying the girl.

‘I'm glad it ended the way it did for your sake,' he said and looked at Regine hungrily. She simply sat, expressionless, lost in thought. He went on: ‘It looks bad, of course. My guv'nor's furious with me. It's got him in trouble with the high-ups. Me too – it certainly won't help my promotion.'

‘I'm so sorry,' she said dully. Then she made an effort to rouse herself. ‘But – why? You caught him. You solved the case.'

‘Yes, but it's not how it should have been done. We won't get the credit in the way we should if there'd been a trial. In fact, it's rather the opposite: trigger-happy police mow down defenceless suspect.'

‘It didn't come across like that in the papers.'

‘Not in the papers you read, perhaps,' he said.

Murray wanted desperately to spell out to Regine what he'd done. Why didn't she understand? Couldn't she see the sacrifice he'd made, the risk he'd taken? ‘You know, if it hadn't been for you – we were convinced it was Arthur Carnforth who'd killed your friend. If it hadn't been for you, we might not have stumbled on the truth.'

Regine seemed to make a great effort to pay attention. ‘I should have come to you sooner,' she said, ‘but I thought – hoped – he'd go away. He'd changed so much … he wasn't like that before … or perhaps he was really, all along … disconcerting how different people can be from what you thought.'

‘Disconcerting's hardly the word.' He hesitated. ‘Am I different from what you thought at first?'

She looked at him, faintly surprised. Oh God – and he began to dread her answer. Because
she
was different now. She'd retreated. He began to realise that she'd never understand just what he'd done for her.

He'd shot O'Connell deliberately, in cold blood. For her: he'd saved her from the publicity of the trial. There'd be no femme fatale appearance of the bigamous wife in the witness box. The respectable civil servant's bogus marriage wouldn't be splashed across the pages of the
Daily Graphic
and the
News of the World
, Regine revealed as the wife of a blackmailing murderer.

Instead of spelling it out to her, he said abruptly: ‘I'm thinking of leaving the force and going abroad.'

Regine's eyes widened at this stark announcement. But if he'd hoped she'd look distressed, even beg him not to go, he was bitterly disappointed.

‘I might join the Hong Kong police,' he said. ‘Everyone's travelled except me. I'm sick of London. I was stuck here all through the war. I want to see the world.'

‘Why Hong Kong?'

‘I don't know, really. Perhaps it was because of the way you talked about China. You made it sound very exotic. And it sounds as if there's a lot of crime to be solved out there.'

‘Hong Kong would be much more staid and British than Shanghai,' she said.

He caught her hand again. The final throw: ‘It would be so wonderful – I know I can hardly expect to hope that … you are the most beautiful woman I've ever met … and I think you care a little for me too …'

He'd gone bright red; he knew he had. He stammered into silence.

She looked down for a long time. If only the silence could last for ever. So long as the silence lasted he still had hope.

At last she squeezed his hand, removed hers, smiled her sad, sweet, alluring smile. ‘Oh Paul, if only I could, but you know it's impossible.'

And now the silence was horrible. At last he managed: ‘I'll think of you when I'm out there.' Moments later he was watching her pull her astrakhan coat around her and he followed her with his gaze as she stepped elegantly across the lounge bar and disappeared into the night.

A week later a gardener from the big house found Carnforth's body.

It seemed to have been dark all day and what little light there was thickened into dusk as Plumer and Murray stumbled up the flight of steps to examine the spot from which, the pathologist pointed out, the dead man must have fallen. The temporary wooden palings had clearly broken away, but whether the death was accident, suicide or murder was impossible to say.

Murray stooped and picked at the remains of what might have been a cigarette stub. But the rain and damp had softened it and it disintegrated between his fingers. He brushed the fragments from his fingers and thought no more about it.

They retrieved the key to Carnforth's flat from his pockets. They drove to Handel Street and began their search.

They found an undated, unfinished letter to Vivienne. They were not to know that it had been written before Charles had arranged the rendezvous at the garden. It ended with the words: ‘I pray to Our Lord continually for strength, but I am finding life difficult without you. Please believe that what I did was only to protect you and Charles, but—'

It broke off at that point. For Plumer, though, it was evidence enough. Clearly their one-time chief suspect had topped himself.

thirty-five

R
EGINE WALKED UP TO THE
Wentworth cottage. Alan answered the door. He greeted her cheerily. He'd long ago forgotten his failure to seduce her over lunch. ‘You're looking wonderful as usual.' He helped her off with her coat. ‘I'm meeting Noel for a pint, you women'll have the house to yourselves without the presence of the clodhopper male of the species.'

Dinah said: ‘Cynthia's not here yet. She didn't want to come, but I made her. We simply have to talk about future arrangements. Oh, but there's the bell. That'll be her.'

Cynthia as yet had put on little weight, was still svelte and cool in her blue dress and grey coat. Dinah had made sandwiches, but Cynthia would only have a cup of coffee. She lit a cigarette. Regine found her friend's self-possession actually more worrying than a grim despair or hysterical anxiety.

Cynthia spoke levelly. ‘Even before he resigned, Ernie and I had decided the only thing is for me to leave the department. As an unmarried woman I shan't be entitled to the benefits that – but of course if I were married, I'd have had to resign from the civil service anyway, pregnant or not. They are supposed to allow you to stay on if you're married now; the law was changed last year, but there's a lot of hostility. Life would be impossible.'

‘What will you do?' Regine twisted her emerald ring. ‘For money, I mean.' Perhaps she could persuade Neville to let her have a hundred pounds … fifty at least … if all else failed, her allowance … the £20 she'd got for the French history … She'd be earning a full-time salary after Christmas, but it wasn't a huge amount …

‘That's what we have to talk about,' said Dinah. ‘I've got a plan. My parents have a cottage – it's on the little bit of land that goes with the house and it's empty. It could be made quite comfortable.'

‘I thought your mother was so conservative,' said Regine, struggling with surprise and shameful resentment that Dinah had been so much more helpful to Cynthia than she had herself.

‘Mother's changed, rather. Last Christmas – things were a bit difficult between Alan and me for a while – Alan was in a state because that friend of his was in such trouble – anyway, in the end I did talk to Mother, not about Alan, not directly, but I think she's more come round to my point of view about one or two things. I mean, she was brought up to think that men ruled the roost. I suppose that's at the bottom of her attitude to sex. That was your one little bit of power, if you could withhold that, turn it into a reward. It's horrid, really. But she's really pleased I'm at the Courtauld. She's all for education for women. It was Dad who was so against it. Anyway – the point is, she'd love to have you stay. As a matter of fact she'd love to have a baby to help look after. And it might stop her nagging me about grandchildren for a while.'

‘I can't accept charity, Dinah,' said Cynthia. To Regine, she seemed too composed. There was a steely obstinacy, but underneath the brittle calm Regine was afraid she was close to breaking point.

‘It's not charity. We talked about that, you know we did.'

‘Dinah,' said Cynthia in her cool, calm voice – how it must have soothed the minister – ‘your father's a prominent barrister, famous even. Think of the publicity, if the truth got out. It would be so embarrassing.'

Dinah was determined. ‘Nonsense. He's
agreed
. When the time comes you can go to the hospital in Southampton. Afterwards you'll have time to think out what you want to do.'

‘I'm going to keep the child.'

‘Yes, well …'

‘Ernie says with things as they are we can't really see much of each other at the moment. With the tribunal and all that there's no time for anything else. Afterwards … things may be different. But for now he can't afford to risk yet another scandal, so …'

Regine said angrily: ‘But he's resigned now, anyway. And does he really think the hotel bill stuff won't come out? How'll he explain that? Will he at least be able to get his wife to pretend she was with him? He'd have to tell
her
the truth in that case.'

‘He has told her – about us.' Cynthia still betrayed no emotion. ‘He says she's forgiven him. But of course she wants him to give me up.'

Regine wondered if it would be better to be brutal. Someone had to make Cynthia see the truth. But it was blunt Dinah who said: ‘It sounds as if he is. Giving you up.'

Cynthia flashed her a glance. But she said serenely: ‘We'll see.' She looked at Regine. ‘And when are you starting your new job?'

‘In the New Year – and I don't think I'll have time to organise my Sundays once I'm working full time.'

‘Give up your Sundays!' said Dinah. ‘Everyone will be so disappointed.'

‘One can't go on doing the same thing for ever. Anyway, I think my Sundays have really had their day.'

She and Cynthia left together. ‘Come back to Downshire Hill with me, for a bit, I don't like you going back to that flat all on your own now that—'

Cynthia smiled. ‘Well, I am on my own. And I will be on my own. Perhaps in a way I always have been.'

Neville had come home early. ‘Is that you, kitten?'

She'd braced herself for the talk they had to have. She needed a drink first – and it might be better if Neville was slightly squiffy. ‘Neville, there's something we have to talk about.'

Neville sat in his chair by the fire, sucked his pipe, poured himself another glass of wine. He listened intently, as if she were explaining some difficult, abstract concept in a foreign language. She even confessed the lies about her family before stuttering to a halt. But she could not bring herself to broach the subject of sex.

Neville said: ‘I know I'm not demonstrative, kitten, but I'd miss you a lot, you know, in fact I really don't know what I'd do without you.'

She'd expected disbelief and anger. His sadness was worse.

‘Is it children? I always thought you agreed with me about the absurdity of reproducing oneself, but you might persuade me to change my mind about that.'

She shook her head.

‘Is your life not fulfilling enough? Idle housewife syndrome? But you'll have your new publishing job in January.'

Freddie's death had started all this. She saw that now. Freddie had filled a void in her life so successfully she hadn't even noticed the void was there. Freddie had
distracted
her.

‘I knew all along about your family, you know,' added Neville. ‘You didn't ever imagine Freddie could keep a juicy little secret like that to himself, did you?'

That was what finally made her cry. Neville put an arm round her, kindly, fraternally, and passed her his large, snow-white handkerchief. ‘Don't let's do anything hasty,' he said. ‘Let's just let things settle down. It's all been so upsetting. You're really not yourself at the moment, kitten.'