A Coat of Varnish (23 page)

Luria had taken the initiative that evening, testing Humphrey, hoping that this was the time to see him uncontrolled. It hadn’t happened like that. Humphrey, unobtrusive, apparently easy-natured, hadn’t said much. It was Alec Luria, by whom others were overawed, who had softened. Soon he was replying, again directly and simply, to questions of Humphrey’s about what his plans were now. Yes, he would probably get married again before too long. He said, with an apologetic smile: ‘I really am a born marrier. It must be another addiction of mine.’

When they left the pub, Luria seemed not to want to part. Was Humphrey engaged that night? Would he drop in at Alec’s apartment and have a snack? Red caviare and demisel, biscuits, that’s about all there would be. Luria’s tastes were as frugal as Humphrey’s. Humphrey had to say yes. Alec Luria was in need of company, in spite of walking so loftily, taller than most though bent at the knees, grizzled hair streaming, features graven. But a man who had all the lineaments of an Old Testament prophet needn’t feel like one. That was a lesson, it occurred to Humphrey, that it was surprisingly hard to learn.

Luria was making an effort to be impersonal.

‘Remember that rough night in the pub?’

‘Well,’ said Humphrey. ‘They’re not as common as all that, are they?’

Luria was being reminiscent; but wouldn’t show: the two of them had walked down Eaton Square, as they were doing now.

‘It seems pretty innocent. That night, I mean,’ Humphrey said. ‘After what has happened since.’

‘Doesn’t the past itself seem innocent?’ Luria asked. ‘One’s own? Past time?’

‘Does it?’

‘I think the past usually does. Unless one remembers it’s true.’

They continued to talk, as they sat in Luria’s flat – talked naturally, not fluently, of things they had done, or not done. It was hard, maybe impossible, to remember the past as it had truly been. Yes, one could feel regret, but that was a soft feeling, an indulgence. Remorse? The past wouldn’t be so innocent if one felt remorse. But wasn’t the idea of remorse something of an invention? A more comforting cover for what one was really like? Remorse ought to exist, so one imagined it did. Whoever had killed the old lady should be feeling it – wasn’t that what one wished, not really what happened? Imagination could be too sentimental by half.

The next Monday morning, before Humphrey had settled down to his newspapers, there was a quick, light step outside the sitting-room, and Frank Briers came in.

‘Am I disturbing you?’

‘There’s not much to disturb.’

‘I want to talk,’ said Briers. He looked round the empty room. ‘Are we safe here?’

The question might have seemed demented. But they were both trained in secret conversations. For much of his career, Humphrey had found it more satisfactory to have them in the open air: there weren’t many areas of the three central parks where he hadn’t heard remarks which it would have been inconvenient for others to hear. Now he smiled in complicity.

‘No need to worry. Unless my old colleagues have been quite excessively efficient. But I really can’t believe that. Let’s go over to the window-seat.’

Out of old habit, secrecy being as compulsive as alcoholism, Humphrey opened the window, which looked out over the garden. There it was calm and very bright. Out of old habit again, they spoke in low voices, though Briers’ was urgent.

‘You got the message on Friday, didn’t you?’

‘I fancy so,’ Humphrey said.

‘You know what I think.’ Briers gave a terse smile. ‘And I know you know.’

‘Fair comment.’

‘And I know that you agree.’

‘I should think less of you if you didn’t.’

‘When did you?’

Humphrey said: ‘Quite early on.’

‘Why?’

‘Chiefly because of you.’ Humphrey was smiling, but had also become impassive, as impassive as the professional he used to be. ‘I thought I could follow what you were really interested in. I happen to have respect for you, and also–’

‘Also what?’

‘It didn’t seem right to me. All this talk about burglars.’

‘What didn’t seem right?’

‘He found his way about the house rather well, it seemed to me. These houses do take a bit of knowing. If it was a burglar, wouldn’t there have been more of a struggle? So far as I was told, there was no sign of anything – until right at the end. It looks to me that she didn’t know what was happening. I couldn’t help a rather obvious thought, she was most likely killed by someone she knew.’

Briers, a yard away on the window-seat, gave a hard chuckle.

‘We shall make a detective of you yet! You missed one or two pointers, of course. You’ve not had our practice. We’ve seen burglars operate often enough. They almost always work in a hurry. They open chests of drawers from the bottom up. You saw the tallboy. Bits and pieces taken out, all neatly closed. That didn’t look much like a burglar. My lads said that right from the beginning. Of course, this man had taken sensible precautions. There wasn’t a fingerprint in the whole bloody house. No trace of footprints. He may even have gone out through the garden in his stockinged feet. He was doing his best to look like an intelligent burglar. Not a bad bet, by and large. But the more we thought of it, the more we came round to thinking it was pretty long odds that he wasn’t.’

‘So you’re certain that it was someone she knew?’

‘Certain’s a big word. I’ve dropped bricks by being too certain. We’ve combed the burglars and other villains all over the place, of course we have. We’re going on with it. You never know what might turn up. It just might have been a kind of odd-job burglar – they do exist. But we’ve been at it for a month, and we haven’t found a candidate in that fashion. I don’t have to tell you, we’ve been looking elsewhere, too. Why do you think I’m wasting your time this morning?’

Humphrey was returning the steady gaze. He said: ‘Anyway, all these conscientious enquiries, done with all the resources of the Yard, make a nice cover when you want to look elsewhere.’

‘As you said yourself a few minutes ago – fair comment.’

This was something like a negotiation, the kind that Humphrey had once had to conduct with other officials in the Foreign Office, men he liked but could not be totally honest with, feeling his way about one of their colleagues. After one of those negotiating silences, Briers said: ‘Yes, I think it’s more likely than not that she was done in as you just said. By someone she knew. That would mean someone you knew, too, wouldn’t it?’

There was a pause before Briers went on: ‘She didn’t have many callers, we’ve gone into that. Somehow she’d dropped the people she must have known at one time, or they’d dropped out, or she’d become too old for them to take any trouble. We haven’t found many callers coming to that house. Naturally there may have been some we’ve never heard of. These things are never tidy. We do know the handful she saw pretty often. As I said, the probability seems to be – I won’t put it higher than that – she was finished off by someone you all knew.’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re with me?’

‘I think it must be likely,’ Humphrey said. He was admitting what he thought, but Briers knew it already.

‘That’s the problem. I tell you I don’t like it.’

‘Why not? You mean, it may be someone you’ve met?’

Briers gave a loud laugh, wholehearted but fierce. ‘Christ alive, no, no. They’re your friends, not mine. One doesn’t have friends in this business. A murderer is a murderer. You’d better understand me.’ He added, calm and professional: ‘I don’t like it because it makes the job more difficult.’

Briers continued, half-leading, half-hectoring. ‘I told you before, when we’re dealing with criminals we know all the ropes. We know where to go for the latest news. Some of them are fairly bright, most of them aren’t. By and large criminals don’t make you feel better about the human race. IQ is low. Human virtue low. So we know how to find our way around.’

‘They made very bad soldiers, the few I saw,’ Humphrey said.

‘Did they? Not surprising.’ Briers returned to his theme. ‘But when we have to deal with the upper classes it’s a different cup of tea. They’re good at keeping their mouths shut. There’s nowhere our lads can go for a bit of dirt. The upper classes can protect themselves. The farther up they are, the more they can protect themselves. They close their ranks. God alive, Humphrey, this isn’t any news to you.’

Briers had had his experiences, Humphrey thought. His tone had gone stiff with resentment. It made Humphrey feel both affronted and stupid. Since Briers took charge, though some of their friendship had come through, trust hadn’t. Making nonsense of Humphrey’s unbelief, it was class which had split them. Even now, when he had to accept it, he began thinking in terms appropriate to elderly aunts of his, a generation before. They used a gentle patronising phrase, referring to one of his bright Cambridge friends, from elevated origins – ‘Oh, that boy could go anywhere’ – rather as though the possibility of unrestricted motion was a social privilege not granted to many. Briers could go anywhere. He would go anywhere. Why should he have made this split?

‘I was wondering,’ Humphrey said temperately, ‘where these upper classes of yours begin.’

‘Category B,’ Briers replied with demolishing promptness, referring to a national income scale. ‘Middle-rank professionals. Middle-bourgeois if you like. Then up and up, into the really rich. And the real aristocracy. Who, by the by, are the hardest nuts to crack.’

‘You know,’ Humphrey was still speaking temperately, ‘I’m not sure who you are interested in, in this case–’

‘I think you have a very shrewd idea.’ Briers was quick with the unannounced probe. Humphrey had used that technique himself, and gave a smile.

‘But there was no one in contact with old Lady Ashbrook who by the wildest stretch belongs to the real aristocracy. She did, of course. And I suppose we have to say her grandson. No one else.’

‘You are.’

‘No, no. The English aristocracy was always ruthless in letting its members gently decline. Primogenitor, that was the secret. That’s why it stayed an aristocracy. My grandfather was an aristocrat, that I grant you. My father was a younger son. Not many pennies between them, and none for me. No, Frank, I’ve found my proper niche in the middle class.’

‘You don’t behave like that.’

‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘I mean,’ said Briers, ‘that you’re capable of looking after your own. That is, in certain circumstances, you would find it natural to cover up. In certain circumstances such as we’re talking about.’

‘You know, I don’t much believe in that sort of loyalty. And I don’t think you ought to.’

‘Look, if I were to tell you here and now that there are reasons to suspect Kate Lefroy of either doing the old lady in, or being a party to it, wouldn’t you cover up for her in any conceivable fashion? And do it very effectively into the bargain, if I know you?’

Humphrey said: ‘That is rather a special case, isn’t it?’ For an instant, he was anxious. Then he laughed, very loud. ‘If you’re thinking of Kate, I should feel the investigation may last a remarkably long time.’

Briers gave his own healthy laugh, unresentful now. He hadn’t missed Humphrey’s attachment. ‘Kate Lefroy wouldn’t have been my first choice anyway. As a matter of fact, on cast-iron police grounds, she’s more in the clear than anyone around. She was in her hospital the whole of that night from early evening right through to the early morning, trying to settle a porters’ strike. One porter had been sacked for coming in drunk. Other porters immediately had an unofficial strike. Emergency operations stopped. Mrs Lefroy somehow coped with those blasted porters. They seem to like her. I fancy she knows when not to be too compassionate. Christ, they bloody well are the scum of the earth.’ Briers, in this unlike the other senior policemen in his team, had a streak of irregular radicalism but it didn’t extend sympathy to malcontents disrupting hospitals.

‘Thank you for relieving my mind about Kate Lefroy,’ Humphrey said, composure restored, making a pretence of relief. But his composure was soon attacked again.

‘You don’t always come quite clean, do you?’ Briers spoke straight at him. ‘This is important. You don’t always–’

‘I thought I did.’

‘Not always.’

‘What are you thinking about?’

‘You didn’t tell me everything I ought to have known about young Loseby.’

Humphrey was baffled.

‘I’m fairly sure I did.’

‘Not quite.’

‘What is all this?’

‘You didn’t tell me he liked boys as well as women.’

‘I didn’t even think of it. It was true when he was younger. There’s nothing original about that. Surely it doesn’t matter?’

‘Actually, it might have done. It would certainly have saved us quite a bit of time. Curiously enough, it might be useful to him.’ Briers’ eyes were bright. ‘You see, that night he now claims to have been in bed with a boy. It wasn’t a woman, he tells us now. I’ve had him in three times – we’ve been keeping an eye on him, as you might expect – and the story has changed quite a lot. Not a girl, but a boy. Not a boy, to be accurate, but a young man.’

‘It might be true.’

‘It might be true. To begin with, it was a girl prepared to swear for him. We soon broke that down. Then it was that little bitch Susan Thirkill. She lied in her teeth for days, lied herself black and blue. Oh yes, she had been with him all weekend; she could tell us how many times they’d made it, just how they’d done it, new tricks. She has a vivid imagination, that she has. All absolutely and totally false. Which means that the young lady hasn’t any backing for what she was doing herself that night. We do know that she was in her father’s flat most of the early part of the day. And Loseby wasn’t.’

‘You’re sure?’

Briers nodded. ‘But we’re not sure where he was. Of course, the boyfriend confirms his timetable minute by minute. So did Susan Thirkill. So did the other girl. A bit of overinsurance, that was, three different stories, where he was, all worked out in detail. The boyfriend’s may be as false as the other two. I rather liked him, by the way. He’s another officer – nothing like keeping it in the regiment. A couple of years younger than Loseby. Wasn’t like the Susan girl, didn’t spread himself about what they were up to. Admitted that they were consenting adults. Otherwise slightly prudish. He does seem fond of Loseby.’