A Coat of Varnish (42 page)

Without a word, Briers glanced at Shingler, who accompanied Perryman out of the room.

When, a quarter of an hour later, Shingler returned, Briers was sitting as though no muscle had moved.

‘You had to let him go, of course.’ That was Shingler’s remark.

‘Of course.’ Briers’ tone was firm and normal.

‘Well, sir?’

‘It’s a failure.’ Briers spoke in the same unmodulated tone. ‘It’s my failure, no one else’s. I’m sorry I’ve let everyone down.’

No one outside the background squad knew precisely what had happened to Perryman. One official statement had been issued to the Press: Dr Ralph Perryman, Lady Ashbrook’s medical attendant, had spent some time helping the police with their enquiries, and had now returned to his professional duties. Most people, even those who had been questioned themselves, found those items baffling. It looked as though there had been one of the police gaffes. Among Perryman’s patients, there was talk of making a protest to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

As Humphrey read those words in the newspaper, he made more sense of them. Something had gone wrong, that was glaring enough. It was a pity for Frank Briers, Humphrey had a passing thought, but he must have kept his judgment cool. If he hadn’t been able to break the man down, there would have been no choice. Humphrey felt disappointment and a nagging regret. The man was getting away. It was wrong, it was taunting, it left one with the excitement still lingering, no sort of consummation after which he could sit back. There was no rightness, none of the bliss of justice being achieved and paid for. Humphrey didn’t cover up his own feelings. Nor did Kate. She had her own biblical sense of justice, but also she felt a kind of visceral relief.

Now Humphrey could understand another thing. He had been told the date of the last interrogation. He had expected a call from Briers. It hadn’t come. The days passed, and Humphrey had heard nothing, nor caught a glimpse of Briers. It was as though he had gone into hiding. Humphrey knew. He had behaved like that himself. One went on in the mode of duty, soldiered on with the job, official, competent. But one wished to avoid the notice of those who knew one was in trouble, particularly those who knew one best.

A week after those first press statements, there was one more. This merely said that papers relating to the late Lady Ashbrook’s estate had been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Inland Revenue.

As soon as Kate came into Humphrey’s drawing-room that evening, blinking after the opaque dark outside, he showed her the newsprint.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘this business began in money. It looks as though it’s finishing in money.’ He added: ‘It looks as though Frank is trying to rescue something from the wreck.’

He had kept nothing from her. She was less forgiving about financial fiddling than about most sins. Now she grimaced. ‘It really is pretty cheap, isn’t it?’

And yet, even with her, tenacious and loyal, memory was proving short. She felt guilty about it, but it sometimes seemed that Lady Ashbrook had been killed years in the past, others had told her that they felt the same. That was what she had confessed to Alec Luria one night, when he was back in London for an end of the year vacation.

‘You mustn’t grumble. You look very well on it,’ Luria said in what, Humphrey had heard it before now, was his preliminary manner with an attractive woman, paternal, severe, but not calculated to deceive the person addressed. Kate gave a surreptitious eye-flash in Humphrey’s direction. But then Alec Luria had another thought.

‘You’ve all forgotten what you were like in the summer.’

‘What have we forgotten?’

‘I don’t mean you so much. I don’t mean poor old Lady Ashbrook. But morale was very low, lower than I have ever known it here. Most people I’ve talked to thought you might all be sunk. Money worth nothing. The whole show going bankrupt. Though no one seemed to have much idea what that might mean.’

Did many people really get anxious about public affairs, affairs outside themselves, for more than a few minutes a day, Humphrey was wondering. Even in a war. Of course, Alec Luria moved among the prosperous, who might have thought they wouldn’t be prosperous much longer. Yes, there had been anxious faces.

Luria was continuing. Whitehall acquaintances of his had admitted that they went through sleepless nights. ‘And the weather didn’t help,’ said Luria. ‘You shouldn’t have weather like that in London. Hot nights. Brilliant days. About as surprising over here as when the sun first broke through the primaeval fog. And everyone was worried to death.’ Luria regarded them both. ‘Now you’re having awful weather. Even by your standards. The darkest winter days I’ve ever seen. And everyone is pretty cheerful. You ought to be safe from disaster for two or three years. And two or three years is a long time in this world of ours.’

Luria, with cheerful solemnity, gave a gloomy prognosis about the West in general and his own country in particular. Then he proceeded on to a less magisterial plane. That was gossip.

He had been in London three days. He told them the latest news of people they knew well. As usual, nearly all that he told them was later shown to be accurate. Oh yes, Tom Thirkill would get his pay-off: he would be in the Cabinet in the New Year. He had made his terms. Special responsibility, independent of the Treasury. He had had to give something in return. That nice woman of his –

‘Stella,’ said Kate.

‘That’s her. She has to get out of her political job.’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Kate broke out, ‘she’s made him. She’s sacrificed all those years for him.’

‘Dear Kate,’ Luria said, ‘you know what politics is like.’

‘I don’t want any part of it ever. I bet that skunk didn’t think twice.’

The story was, according to Luria, that this was a concession to the backbenchers of Thirkill’s own party. They didn’t mind so much about the two living together: what they hated most was a woman having so much influence.

‘So the bastard didn’t protect her.’ Kate was violent. ‘Perhaps it will open her eyes. No, it won’t. She’ll find an excuse for him. She’ll go on being used.’

Neither of the men – for Alec Luria knew some of the history of Kate’s marriage – felt that it was appropriate to comment. In his three days in London, Luria had not only been dining out, but had been taken to bars in both the Commons and the Lords. It was just before the December recess. In the latter place, he had met Loseby sitting with some friends. Loseby would soon be there in his own right, Luria had heard. His father was in an alcoholic coma. Luria had also heard Loseby might be facing charges for tax offences.

Humphrey shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. The Revenue might mulct him with largish fines; that was the worst he could expect. If so, those fines would be paid quickly by his father-in-law. No publicity about Loseby’s finances. Thirkill would have to see to that. Someone had said that was why Loseby had married the girl – that was in the Lords’ guest-room, Luria remarked. He gave his honking laugh, but for once not at his own expense. He said: ‘In any case, my heart isn’t going to bleed for that young man. He’ll have come through without a scratch. He was saying as much to his friends. Decent intelligent characters by the way. Loseby was telling them that he was in a spot of bother. That’s what he called it. But somehow he always managed to get out of spots of bother. Or someone got him out.’

Kate said: ‘I can’t stand him. I never could. He’s too indestructible to be true. How was he taking it?’

‘Just as much the Shining One as ever, as far as I could see. He went in for some mild self-analysis. He said that, so far as he could remember, he hadn’t been perfectly honest at fifteen. And if you hadn’t been perfectly honest at fifteen it wasn’t reasonable to think that you would be any more honest at thirty. Which he seemed to think settled the matter.’

After that evening in Humphrey’s house, he didn’t see Alec Luria again until Christmas Day. Then they went out for dinner, both loose in the great closed town, as though they had been young students. It happened that Kate, apologetic, near to the tears she didn’t often show, angry with fatality, and with herself and Humphrey, had announced a day or two before that she couldn’t come to him on Christmas Day. It was the treat of the year for her husband. She had tried to suggest that he went to friends, but he had looked like a child crying. On the day itself, Humphrey was left with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Then Luria telephoned. The bass voice enquired – by any miracle, had Humphrey an hour or so free? When he heard of Humphrey’s state, he offered dinner at the best Chinese restaurant. Chinese restaurants were suitable for Christmas, he said. If you’d been born in my family, said Luria, you wouldn’t have affectionate memories of the Christian festivals.

So the two of them, like eccentric and lonely bachelors, settled down to a prolonged Chinese meal. Whether Luria was lonely or not, and whatever his memories of childhood persecutions, he was in a state of well-being as pervasive as in Humphrey’s house a couple of weeks before. He had brought along a magnum of one of Humphrey’s favourite clarets. He was happy, and he needed Humphrey to be happy, too. Clearly something was happening in his life. It must be the prospect of another marriage, but he was cherishing the secret to himself. He might be determined to keep a secret, but he couldn’t resist letting out indications. From those, it wasn’t hard for Humphrey to guess that Luria, having been turned down by Celia, had then found a girl much younger than himself, in the English upper class. Not with money: Luria had had more than enough of that. Probably with antique English connections. Possibly from one of the grand houses. The heritage might sound all ridiculous; but for Alec Luria it was old, it was a world he had once dreamed of. Further, thought Humphrey, the girl might be someone Luria could love. Humphrey was fond of his friend, but a sardonic voice was telling him that Luria was not hard to please in the way of love, other requirements being met.

‘I’m glad I thought of this,’ Luria said, manipulating chopsticks with long dextrous fingers. ‘One doesn’t have people to talk to, at our age.’ That seemed a bizarre remark, from someone who spent so much of his time pontificating in two continents; but he was speaking with a kind of timid intimacy. A little later he said, as though at random: ‘I used to detest Christmas. But it wasn’t the worst. Good Friday was the worst. When you were young you never had people in the next block who hounded you for no reason you could understand–’

Humphrey said no.

Luria was eating vigorously, happy and benign. He said: ‘Christianity looks different, my boy, when you see it from that angle.’

Suddenly Luria switched away from the semitic experience, and said: ‘Things are going well with Kate? I needn’t ask. I could see the other night.’

‘Wonderfully well.’

Just for that moment, Humphrey had dropped his irony. In return, Luria dropped his pundithood. Acquaintances would have been astonished to find them talking, and even looking, like young men.

‘I remember I tried, with the very best intentions, to warn you off. I’d never thought she’d be able to cut away from that phoney.’ Alec Luria broke into the extraordinary mirth reserved for the times when he had made a mistake. ‘I was a hundred per cent wrong.’

‘Not a hundred per cent.’ Humphrey gave a simple confessional smile. ‘She still looks after him, you know. Otherwise I shouldn’t be here with you tonight.’

‘Never mind. Count your blessings. You’re very lucky.’

‘Don’t you think I know it?’

Casually Luria said: ‘I didn’t get anywhere with Celia, as you probably guessed. I thought I might have been right for her. I fancy she thought so too, for a little while. Then she sheered off. Probably it’s just as well for both of us. She seems to have found what she really wants. I’ve nothing to complain about myself.’

For an instant it seemed that he was ready to confide, then smiled – shamefaced? guilty? triumphant? – and went back to talking of Celia. ‘Yes, she’s found a schoolteacher. They’re going to live a commonplace life, she told me. Not even trying to do good in community relations or anything like that. No, they’re going to live in Woking. That’s
petit bourgeois
as they come, isn’t it?’

Humphrey grinned. ‘Well, it wouldn’t do for you.’

‘It’s very odd. She has everything. She’s beautiful. Clever, sweet. Strong character. Born and bred in the Establishment, if that means anything. But all she wants is not to draw attention to herself. Just to look after her little boy and perhaps have another one. And do her best for the people round her. It’s all very kind and humble – but when characters like that just give up any kind of struggle, then I have an awful feeling that it’s a bad lookout for the world she comes from. It does seem like a sign that they will lose out, too.’

‘I’m very fond of Celia, though,’ Humphrey said. ‘If that’s what she wants for herself, she’d better have it.’

‘She’s a good girl,’ said Luria gravely, like an old-fashioned hostess receiving congratulations on her daughter’s looks. ‘She did say something that might interest you.’ Luria switched off again, his conversation losing its structure, either because he was jubilant or because he had drunk more than usual, or maybe both. Soon he was saying: ‘The police have decided that that doctor got rid of the old lady, haven’t they? That seems to be common knowledge. They can’t tie it up, but they know. You’re close to that bright detective. Do you agree?’

‘Entirely.’

‘Celia doesn’t.’

‘She can’t possibly know the score.’

‘Nor does Paul. I had a drink with him in Washington. He and Celia have a theory of their own. They think it was a couple–’

‘What couple?’

‘Susan and her father. She did it, and he went along and did the clearing-up.’

‘Paul was certain that Susan didn’t even know the old lady had been killed–’

‘Then he must have thought again.’

For an instant, Humphrey was seeing the kaleidoscope of suspicion. There would have been time, just, for Tom Thirkill to do the clearing-up – a curious term for ransacking the room, faking a burglary. He might have used the hammer. He would have done most things to shelter his daughter. Then Humphrey’s mind cleared.