A Coat of Varnish (15 page)

Humphrey couldn’t help grinning. That must be the sort of gibe with which Loseby did his seductions. You had to know his own kind to feel how edged a gibe it was. For a few moments, Humphrey spoke more amiably. ‘Well, let’s go on from there. Anyone half-way sensible would give you exactly the same advice. A decent lawyer would. And it’s totally useless unless you’re telling the truth. You have to go to the police and say precisely what you’ve said to me. You have to go the minute you’ve finished – that.’ Humphrey was looking without enthusiasm at the mound of pasta. ‘You ought to have gone yesterday morning, of course. They’ll be perfectly civil. You’ll have to make a statement, and sign it. Then they’ll check. Remember this is serious. They’re not fools. They’ll be suspicious. It’s their business to be suspicious. They don’t take a lofty view of human nature. They’ll be interested in your grandmother’s will. If she happens to have left you something fairly handsome – I imagine that’s very much on the cards – then they’ll keep their eyes specially wide open. That’s why you can forget any advice I’m giving you unless you’re telling the truth.’ As Shingler had said in the police station the previous afternoon, the thought about the will was obvious enough. Humphrey wasn’t showing special perception or clairvoyance. The thought would have occurred to anyone in his place near such a murder at such a time.

Humphrey broke off. ‘By the way, what’s in her will? Do you know?’

‘I haven’t the slightest idea. Have you?’

‘How should I? I wasn’t in her confidence, ever. I’m not sure that anyone was, towards the end. Except perhaps yourself.’

‘No, I wasn’t. She was fond of me, that’s all.’ For the first time in these exchanges, Loseby seemed grave. He asked, his eyes not watching Humphrey: ‘You trust me, don’t you?’

‘What do you think?’

Humphrey had reproduced the light flicking tone with which Loseby had met a question of Humphrey’s own. In fact, on the spot, Humphrey couldn’t have given a truthful answer even to himself. Did he trust Loseby? Yes, he had conducted more than enough interrogations. He had discovered a curious thing. Insight, intuition, whatever you like to call it, got lost as the interrogation went on.

Suspicions thickened and crystallised until it was like being in a paranoid web. It was something any security officer ought to guard himself against, and a great many didn’t. Everything seemed as possible as everything else, and everyone seemed as possible a danger. For instance, so far as Humphrey recalled, the only persons in the immediate neighbourhood who had question marks against them on the files in his old office were Tom Thirkill, inserted long before for left-wing actions in his youth, commonplace for a politician, and, believe it or not, Paul Mason. That was because Paul, exploring international economics, had travelled widely in Eastern Europe.

In cool blood, anyone who could distinguish a man from a bull’s foot would realise that Paul was as likely to betray his country as the Duke of Wellington; but in an interrogation Humphrey could imagine the paranoid suspicion getting sharper – couldn’t this be a classical specimen of the trained and glacial upper-class defector? You had to learn to wash away the crystallisation in any interrogation. That midday, in the sleazy café, Humphrey couldn’t have decided whether he trusted Loseby or not, or whether, if he had been a policeman, he would have been paying him unusual attention.

Loseby himself, without hurry, scooping at a large ice cream, had moved to a quiet businesslike discussion of funeral arrangements. Presumably he would have to take charge. When would the police let him have the body? Or was it the Coroner? Humphrey shook his head. He had frequently worked with policemen on security cases, never on one like this. Presumably they could get an answer. Would her son, Loseby’s father, come to the funeral? Loseby was certain that he wouldn’t: he’s pretty far gone, Loseby said without expression. Humphrey remembered gossip – that Lord Pevensey, in his early sixties, was in an advanced state of alcoholism.

What would Grandmama have wanted, Loseby asked, by way of a funeral? Again Humphrey was ignorant. Perhaps there were some instructions among her papers. Loseby had a faint recollection that she had once said that she didn’t like burials. Cremation? She would certainly have wanted nothing grandiose. Used to pleasing, making a technique of it, skilful with his innocence, Loseby was – so Humphrey had realised years before – as sophisticated as most men; but he was as certain as the simplest that he was in contact with the wishes of the dead.

That afternoon, Loseby rang up with some more questions. Over the wire, his voice sounded less mellifluous than in the morning, less persuasive than face to face. He hadn’t begun to say a word about his own concerns. Humphrey said: ‘You did clear up your own position with the police, did you?’

‘Coped with.’

‘I hope you remembered what I told you.’

Voice polite again now. ‘I always remember what I’m told.’

Humphrey waited for a call from the police station, but Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday passed without one. He began to notice that there was plenty of commotion in the neighbourhood, as yet subdued. Not only in the Square. Several elderly residents stopped Humphrey on his strolls, as though he ought to be able to reassure them. They were anxious. The heat, the burnished sky had sharpened tempers. Monty Lefroy seemed to speak for them all. ‘If this can happen in Belgravia,’ he said in a stern, threatening tone, ‘it can happen anywhere.’

The Press was beginning to issue ominous comments. Following America, they were using law and order in a slogan, and
The Times
had a judicious editorial entitled just that. A very old lady, who had done service to the State, had been brutally murdered. In many ways, said the leader, it would be generally admitted that this intolerable event reflected a condition of contemporary society. Nevertheless, the event remained intolerable, and we had to search our hearts and ask essential questions.

After the official obituary there was one gently protesting addition in
The Times
, signed simply CT.

May a friend add a word of personal knowledge about Lady Ashbrook? Strangers or casual acquaintances were sometimes put off by Lady Ashbrook’s insistence on maintaining rigid standards, often standards of courtesy which seem too rigid for the later generation. This recalls the well-known story of her rebuke to Lady Astor at Cliveden. Lady Ashbrook was the last person to put up with rudeness from anyone on earth. But her friends knew that she had far more important qualities: absolute integrity, extreme generosity of spirit, extraordinary kindness and humility which to those who knew her were never disguised by her sometimes astringent tongue, a profound Christian faith, which manifested itself in constant care for others.

As he read that portrait of a character, Humphrey gave a sour, regretful smile. Would she have been amused by that remarkable praise? Possibly not. For most people, even for those sardonic about others (most of all for them?), any praise was better than none.

Then there was silence about Lady Ashbrook, not about the case. By Friday, Humphrey was becoming disappointed at having no invitation from Briers, and to his own amusement, a shamefaced amusement, hurt as well as disappointed. It was absurdly like being very young again, and having a friend, suddenly prominent, not ask one to a party.

In the middle of Friday morning, though, a call came through. ‘Mr Leigh? Chief Superintendent Briers would like to speak to you.’

Briers’ voice, usually subdued, was by nature rich and resonant, a baritone so strong that it didn’t fit his quiet appearance. ‘Hullo, Humphrey. Good to talk to you. I happen to be down here on duty. I don’t know whether you’ve heard.’

‘Of course I’ve heard.’

‘Good enough. You knew the old lady, didn’t you? I wonder if you could spare me half an hour?’

‘Naturally.’

‘This afternoon? Three o’clock? Look forward to seeing you.’

Humphrey was still puzzled as he had been by the delay in making contact. It wasn’t so long, no more than a couple of years, since Briers had asked him out to lunch and told him some harsh news of his own. Over the telephone his voice had been cheerful and cordial enough, but no more than businesslike. However, he had seen Briers in action before, as concentrated as this.

Humphrey duly walked the half-mile from his house that afternoon. The police station was pretty in the shimmering sunlight, flower-boxes in front of the ground-floor windows. It might have been a picture of an idealised police station in a sleepy market-town sometime before 1914, all peaceful and unsuspecting. One had to ignore the motor-cycles parked beside the pavement and the cars on the other side, yet it was oddly nostalgic, as in one of those period stories, so tranquil that one could smell the flowers. Gerald Road itself was a neat and comely side street, the original developers, wasting no space, having built a row of handsome houses, with wider frontages than any in Aylestone Square. A few years before, one of those houses had been a staging-post for the theatre’s smartest stars.

When Humphrey went in, he was greeted with disconcerting promptness. ‘He’s in the Murder Room, sir,’ said a constable. ‘I’ll take you straight in.’

There in the long room, Briers was sitting at the top table. He sprang to his feet, outgoing and vigorous. ‘Good to see you, Humphrey.’ He went on: ‘Sorry this place is so untidy. My Office Manager – a lad called Flamson, you’ll have to meet him sometime – he’s getting it straight. It’s always a bit of a problem.’ Actually the room wasn’t untidy, except by Briers’ obsessive standards, besides which Humphrey, more orderly than most, had often felt ashamed. There must have been precise instructions as to how Humphrey was to be picked out by sight, welcomed, and brought in.

Briers explained some practical details. He was friendly but – Humphrey couldn’t be certain whether he was being oversuspicious – perhaps not intimate. He was certainly not taciturn, but that was nothing new. In Humphrey’s experience, nor were most men who spent their lives in something like action, as did soldiers, businessmen, barristers. The stereotype was the opposite of the truth. For silent persons you would do better to seek out creative intellectuals.

Frank Briers began to talk about the case. There would be big trouble if he didn’t get the whole thing cut and dried within weeks, if not days.

‘Shall you?’ Humphrey asked.

‘I wouldn’t bet on it, if I were you.’ Briers wasn’t given to pretending. ‘It may be one of the messy ones.’

He broke off: ‘You got in on the ground floor, of course. I saw your statement, it’s in the dossier, there’d be something wrong if it wasn’t. I wanted to see you before, but I had to get things organised. You might like to know how far we’ve gone. Perhaps it’s about half an inch. Anyway we can talk. You’re a pretty good security risk, aren’t you? No one’s been able to put you inside yet, at any rate.’

Humphrey had realised, early in their acquaintance, that Briers was imaginative, subtle, sensitive. When he had first had to co-operate with Humphrey he had seen documents with Humphrey’s rank and name spelled out in full. Lieutenant-Colonel Humphrey Leigh. He had begun by calling Humphrey Colonel. He discovered in minutes that that frayed Humphrey’s nerves, and never did it again.

Along with his excessive energy, he had what a week or two before the murder had been called the manners of the heart. But he also had a simpler taste for a kind of gallows or penal humour. That could be disconcerting, but one got acclimatised, Humphrey thought. After all, Briers wouldn’t have become a top-class policeman if he were benign all the way through.

Humphrey tried to get back to their personal relationship.

‘It’s some time since we last met, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘How is Betty now?’

‘It’s going very much as I told you. We have to live with it, that’s all.’ Briers’ wife, quite young, had been physically stricken. It wasn’t a marriage break-up, but a clinical fatality. He didn’t wish to talk about it, but Humphrey felt that that wasn’t the reason for constraint between them, if there was some. With a man so professionally affable, it was hard to judge.

‘How far have we gone?’ Briers reverted to his own question and proceeded to answer it. Though the words streamed out, there was, as Humphrey took for granted, an orderly mind behind them. There was also an admirable memory – which again Humphrey took for granted – since he had one of the same sort himself. It was a deflating reflection that you couldn’t do any kind of intelligence work, police work, without it. There was no substitute. Files, dossiers, computers were all dead unless there was a human memory near. Which was why intelligence operations got less penetrating, or sillier, once they grew outside the range of a single mind.

Frank Briers was tabulating his answers. To begin with, he went over them exactly as he had done with his colleagues. Time of murder, cause of death, head-battering after death. There Briers, without Humphrey being aware of it, cut off. He didn’t give any hint of the speculations he had let fall to the inner trio on the Monday afternoon.

‘One thing is certain,’ he did say firmly, in good spirits, ‘whoever did it wasn’t just scum off the streets. The papers got it all wrong. Everyone gets everything wrong in a mess like this. It stands to sense he wasn’t just a hooligan. He could have been a professional. He’d studied the geography. He was working in gloves, or else he wiped off all the prints. We haven’t found one yet anywhere in the house. Of course, he seems to have gone bonkers after he killed her. He didn’t need to beat her head in. That’s not professional. But it’s been known to happen.’

‘What was he after?’

Briers asked, sharply: ‘What do you think?’

‘I haven’t the remotest idea.’

‘Nor have we yet.’ They hadn’t yet identified what
objets d’art
Lady Ashbrook had possessed and what had been taken. Maria was the only source of information so far. Some silver had gone. The pictures had been left. ‘He was sensible enough for that. Impossible to get rid of. By the by, how valuable are they?’