A Murder in Mayfair (23 page)

“Except that it was an act,” said Caroline, sharp and downright. “I suspect Lucy of acting much of the time, a congenital role-player. The act she put on depended on what people wanted of her, and deeper down what could help her to get ahead, get what she wanted.”

“That tallies with a lot of what I've heard about her—from a man who helped her during her pregnancy, for example.”

Caroline nodded vigorously.

“What she wanted in this case was to get her claws into our father. I see that
now.
She saw that he loved us, saw that he thought Mummy neglected us, even positively disliked us, so she wormed her way into his heart by being wonderful with his children.”

“I think Matthew would say she never really fooled you.”

“Probably he would. He's remembering the things we said about her later. Children are much more easily fooled than sentimentalists like to admit.” She shook her head, remembering. “We thought she was wonderful. Then she got her way, got him into bed with her, and from then on we were surplus to requirements. Except when he was there we were treated with benign neglect.”

“Ah, so you did see through her before things came to a head. Children are not so gullible then.”

“We didn't exactly see through her. We judged her on how she treated us. I think that's what children always do. We hated her because she just switched off her interest in us.”

“Ah, but did you realize that she was no longer interested because she'd got what she wanted and was sleeping with your father?”

“No-o-o.” But she had to think long and hard about that. “That came later. Remember this was a large and traditional house. We were upstairs on the second floor for much of the time—though being children we often broke loose, came downstairs, and noticed things. But no, we didn't know Lucy and Daddy were sleeping together. We did know something was very wrong with our parents' marriage, and had been for some time. Our sympathies were all with our father, because frankly Mummy was a hard, cold bitch and we felt for her just nothing. . . . We did know Daddy slept alone.”

“Ah.”

“Without realizing its significance. In any case I think in aristocratic circles it's quite usual, or was then, to have separate bedrooms, with separate dressing rooms, linked but apart. You
came
together when you felt like it, of course, but you slept apart. But I think our parents slept together when I was young. At some stage Daddy moved out.”

“I'd gathered Lucy moved into a household where the marriage
was in a sticky state—perhaps on the rocks. It seems like a recipe for disaster.”

“It does, doesn't it? We were far too young to understand that. We would never tell Daddy how we felt about Mummy, never tell him how she neglected us and never wanted us near her. He
knew,
of course, and we would have liked to tell him and talk about it but sensed he would shy off the subject. In fact I think the reason we-—or I—realized the marriage was on the rocks was because after a time we never talked about Mummy with him at all. It was a subject we all avoided by common consent.”

“So what was the situation in Upper Brook Street in the months leading up to the murder? Your father had a separate bedroom, but was stealing into Lucy's room. Lucy was pregnant, and perhaps was happy she now had a hold or a bargaining lever to use with your father. And your mother was on her own-—but perhaps, someone has suggested, had a new man in her life.”

“All that may be true, but most of it we didn't know about. A lot of what I
think
I knew I got from the article by that American in the
Observer
color supplement. As to whether Mummy had a lover, we just wouldn't know. We hardly saw her. We certainly didn't know Lucy was pregnant. We did sense that Daddy was fond of her, then sense something stronger than that. . . . But I think that in the weeks leading up to Mummy's death something changed. The situation wasn't as clear-cut as you make it.”

“I just have the broad outlines in my head—at least I think I have.”

“My memory of the weeks leading up to the . . . murder—I hate saying it—is that the situation was very fraught. Our father wasn't his usual self. Nervy, irritable, tense. When Matthew and I talked about it afterward we wondered—in childish terms—whether Lucy had
found another man. But she must have found out that she was pregnant by then, and this could have been a way to bring things to a head with Daddy: ‘I'm having your child. What are you going to do about it?'”

“A reason for divorcing your wife, not murdering her.”

She got quite animated at this.

“Ah, but you're talking as if the . . . murder was something planned and premeditated. I don't see how it can have been, unless it went badly wrong. I think it must have been a spur-of-the-moment act of rage, something totally out of character, brought on by—something, I can't guess what. And then the only thing Daddy could think of to do was get out, disappear, whatever.”

“Kill himself?”

“Maybe.”

“If Lucy Mariotti was sticking out for marriage, then divorce would hardly have been a problem. Divorce might not have done any good to your father's political career, but it sure as hell wouldn't have been as bad for it as murder.”

“You're still talking as if this were premeditated. I'm quite sure it wasn't.”

“Point taken. In any case most people seem to think your father's political career wasn't all that important to him.”

“It wasn't. Fishing and shooting are what he really enjoyed doing.”

“And of course after divorce there would have been another step, and one he may not have been willing to take: marriage to Lucy.”

Caroline thought.

“You mean he could have seen through her by then?”

“Yes. Everybody agrees that Lucy was clever—cunning, devious, ingratiating. I bet it was due to Lucy that they all three went round to parties and theaters together—putting up a front. But I have the impression it was the sort of cleverness
that after a time
showed.
You realized she was so pleased with herself and her own cleverness. She gave herself away. Professor Frere, who took her in after the murder, thought that. If your father felt himself trapped in one bad marriage, he may not have wanted to walk straight into another.”

“Yes. . . . Somehow the feeling I got, though I may be mis-remembering, of course, is that he was as . . . hot for her as ever. Sorry, I can't think of a nicer way of putting it.”

“I suppose you didn't get any ideas about what might have happened by what you saw on the night of the murder, or the day afterward?”

She raised her eyebrows.

“You're joking. We heard nothing, saw nothing, knew nothing. We slept through all the to-ings and fro-ings of the night itself, and when we awoke the next morning we found that the police had taken over the house.”

“How did you find out?”

“We heard noises, went out onto the landing, and—I still have the picture in my mind—immediately saw a policeman and Mrs. Gould the housekeeper. She was normally rather a remote figure, not someone of any great importance in our lives. Obviously she had been waiting for us to wake up. She ran forward, bundled us back into our bedroom, and said there'd been a bad accident. Said our granny and grandad Martindale were on their way to take us to their home, and they'd explain. We'd to stop in our room, she'd bring us breakfast, and we'd to wait for them. That was what happened. They came, obviously very upset, but pulling themselves together for our sakes. We were dressed by then, and we were hurried downstairs—I'd never
seen
so many policemen, and never have since—and out into their car, with cameras clicking from behind the police cordon. I thought I saw Lucy being driven away ahead of us and I thought, ‘So
she's
not dead then,' because we'd talked
about it while we waited and we'd decided that somebody must have died. As soon as we were well under way Granny Martindale explained that Mummy had had a terrible accident and was dead. All I remember feeling was that I was glad it wasn't Daddy. I expect I showed it, and hurt Granny.”

“Were they fond of your mother?”

Caroline considered.

“No, I don't honestly think so. I think Granny was hurt because it showed how badly they'd failed with her upbringing. With her education they went for class rather than warmth. They were very careful in choosing our schools.”

“Did they tell you about your father?”

“I remember asking, and they told us he'd had to go away, and we wouldn't be seeing him for a while. We accepted that then. It was all part of this big disaster that had happened. It was only later, when we started to overhear whispered comments and conjectures, that we began to get clues and to piece things together.”

She stopped, and I lay there wondering if there was anything else I wanted to ask her. In a way what she told me was illuminating, but also infuriating: she had been so close to events, but kept from knowing about them. She took, or rather snatched at, the cue of my silence.

“I must go. It's not fair to tire you with all this dragging up of the past. It will be good when we can meet and talk about something else, won't it?”

“It will.”

“What you should be worrying about at the moment is not the past but the present. You're going to have to get yourself better security. Shouldn't that be easy now you're a minister?”

I pursed up my lips in distaste.

“I've always wanted as little as possible. I don't choose to invite someone into my life. You come from the class that had servants.
You're used to having outsiders around you all the time. I come from the class that keeps themselves to themselves.”

“Well, you're going to have to keep yourself a bit less to yourself, and have someone beside you. Promise! You politicians are so lacking in common sense! You're under threat, so you need protection. I don't want to lose you now that I've found you.”

I nodded a promise and she darted out. I lay there, thinking not of my security, but of something she had said. She'd talked about her father fishing. I'd never seen him as a country person before, and the family certainly hadn't had an estate on which to practice rural pastimes. Neither she nor Matthew had talked about being in the country with him. Had she been speaking not of the government minister of 1962, but the man he had become since? She had said: “Fishing and shooting are what he really enjoyed doing.” If she really thought of him as dead, wouldn't it have been more natural to say “were what he enjoyed doing”? Had there been an infinitesimal pause between the “are” and the rest of the sentence? Had she begun to say “are what he really enjoys,” and then hurriedly amended the sentence to cover her tracks?

Had she inadvertently been about to speak of him not in the past but in the present?

C
aroline rang me on my second day back at work. Somehow I was not surprised. Nor did her slightly odd manner disconcert me. The bright tone and roundabout way of speaking, hinting but not saying, were things I instinctively understood. I was on the verge of becoming in reality a brother to her and Matthew.

“Back to work so soon! You must be a glutton for it.”

“I enjoy my work,” I protested. “And of course it's piled up.”

“Ah—then you won't want to see me again.”

“On the contrary, I'd very much like to. And I always make a habit of taking time off at some point in the day.”

“Really? That is sensible. So maybe we could meet at lunchtime. Are you a great one for lunch?”

Her intonation told me this is what phoneticians classify as a question expecting the answer “no.”

“Not really. But a walk always clears the head.”

“I do agree. If only fashion shows would give us breaks to do the same! Places do get crowded at lunchtime, though . . .”

“I'm flexible. I could make it for two to three.”

“That sounds good. Let me think. What about Green Park, near the station at two?”

“I'll be there. And the day?”

“Tomorrow?”

And that's what we fixed on.

My driver who, with his Wee Free mind could find reasons to disapprove of anything, even an hour in the park on a chilly day, looked dour. He left me by the tube station, and when I slipped into the park I was hailed by Caroline from one of the seats along by Queen's Walk. Before I got to her she had begun to march determinedly away from Piccadilly and away from the more frequented paths. When I gained her side she looked around her, but was not quite satisfied. We walked on. I suppressed any desire to comment on or ridicule her precaution. She had had decades of concealment. Finally she turned to me, still trying to hold herself as casually as possible. I was close, but not too close. We could have been lovers ending an affair.

“You picked up my slip, didn't you?”

I thought for a second, then nodded.

“I noticed something that seemed a bit odd.”

“I thought I'd covered it over rather cleverly, but I saw something waft over your face—suspicion, or maybe puzzlement, I suppose.”

“I thought you very nearly used a present tense where one wouldn't be natural.” I came close to her, my face earnest. “That's never been my main interest in going into all this.”

“I know. I'm glad. But Matthew and I had talked it over even before I met you, and we've discussed it again since our meeting. Oh damn—that man is looking at us. Could he be Secret Service, following you?”

I repressed the instinct to say this was Green Park not Gorky Park, and we walked on to where there were still fewer people.

“I think if he was Secret Service he wouldn't be looking at us,” I said lightly. “They have artificial eyes implanted where nobody would suspect them to be.”