A Splash of Red (19 page)

'It is not good to take the seat of another person,' said Dr Harman in a loud voice. 'You will learn.' Jemima ignored her.

Finding the press mark in the catalogue - a list of numbers - and filling in a white slip to order a book was a famously aggravating task. In another area of her mind Jemima, as she coped with the heavy catalogues, was also turning over what Valentine had told her. She too was shattered. A few minutes' respite for them both was perhaps not a bad thing.

Moreover the catalogue appeared to have taken on a life of its own; it was a creature of mood, and in this case a peculiarly perverse mood. It sent her scurrying from one quarter of the alphabet to the other - a shift of numerous volumes - as a book written by one Marion Miller frustratingly turned out to be listed under her maiden name of Evans. As Miller had also proved to be Millar - a shift of another volume -and the literary Evanses were innumerable - more than one heavy volume of entries - the whole operation took a great deal of time.

Jemima concentrated on filling in the order slip accurately; a mistake in the catalogue number would send her back to the start of the whole ponderous process. Slip finally filled and deposited in the box provided, Jemima made for the exit. On her way she glanced towards Row B. Valentine had gone on ahead. The typescript he had been perusing in his capacity as a working publisher was however still there, sheets spread about the desk. Clearly he intended to return and collect it.

Jemima hoped that Valentine's pause for recovery would only have crystallized his intention to make a clean breast of his story to Pompey as soon as possible. Valentine's own first-hand evidence - rather than her second-hand report of it - was both crucial and devastating where Kevin John was concerned. So far as Jemima knew, this was the first positive proof that Kevin John had been at the scene of the murder during the lunch hour. Under the circumstances her own irrational belief in Kevin John's innocence was fast fading. To say the least of it, Kevin John had lied about his movements to the police in his sworn statement (and to Jemima herself on the afternoon of the murder, for that matter).

Jemima was amused to see that Professor Leinsdorf and Dr Harman had also abandoned Row B. Perhaps some economic conference of their fine minds was being held elsewhere in the building? Their respective papers and books however were spread about ostentatiously; no chances were being taken of another alien invasion.

She wended her way to the end of the Reading Room and proceeded to the checkpoint where a couple of uniformed officials, one woman and one man, maintained a search of bags and belongings to ensure that the valuable rare books of the British Library did not stray.

Jemima's prettily patterned notebook was always subjected to a peculiarly rigorous search as though some exciting rarity was being smuggled out, although half the pages were blank and the other half filled with her own hand-written notes. Jemima was just giving her automatic speech - 'That's my own hand-writing; no, it's not the property of the British Library; look, no press marks; yes, it's my
own
notebook' when she was interrupted by a familiar guttural voice -speaking even louder than before.

'Ja
,
ja,
it iss her! It iss she who took the seat of Professor Leinsdorf.' Panting heavily as though she had been running, Dr Irina Harman was standing at the exit and pointing in the direction of Jemima. 'Stop her!' A middle-aged man in a jacket and tie stood at her side.

It was really too much. Jemima, already tense about her rendezvous with Valentine - she suddenly feared she might have allowed him enough time to change his mind - felt her patience beginning to snap. The whole incident was so absurd.

'For God's sake,' she began angrily as the official stepped forward. He looked acutely embarrassed, particularly when he recognized Jemima; Jemima for her part rather thought she recognized him; he was the superintendent, or held some other fairly responsible position, and they had met in a discussion group about the future of the Reading Room.

'Excuse me, could I have a private word with you?' he asked in a low but firm voice. 'It's Jemima Shore, isn't it? We've met.' His embarrassment deepened still further. 'And you were sitting in Row B just now, and holding a conversation—'

'For God's sake,' Jemima repeated in a furious voice which she did not bother to moderate. 'It was only a tiny episode and I've already apologized. This lady seems to be quite obsessed—'

'No, no, you don't understand, Miss Shore. I'm afraid the gentleman you were talking to just now collapsed very suddenly at his desk. We're trying to track anyone who knows him—'

'Collapsed! But I only just left him—'

'I know. It was very sudden, according to this lady here. Some form of heart attack, I fear. We've summoned an ambulance. But I ought to prepare you—'

'He iss dead,' interrupted Jemima's quondam accuser in a heavily lugubrious voice. 'He spoke to uss, said some words which are odd, then he iss dead. There iss nothing even Professor Leinsdorf could do for him. She had tried respiration immediately. Your friend iss quite dead.'

13

Strong women

'Fatal heart attack. Could have happened any time. Heart in a terrible dickey state. Mother - strong woman that, by the way, remarkable fortitude - confirmed it.' Chief Inspector Portsmouth gave a shake of the head which under the circumstances was positively blithe. 'Mind if I do?' He poured himself another pale whisky and water, courtesy of Sir Richard Lionnel. 'What about you?' Jemima in turn shook her head.

'But why did it have to happen
th
en?’
she asked despondently. 'When he'd told me so much - but not everything. Not every detail. And he hadn't told you - second time round - anything at all. No sworn statement.'

'My old mother, another woman of remarkable fortitude, always used to say, "Into each life a little rain must fall.'" Pompey was maddeningly cheerful. You would not think, to look at his spare relaxed figure, once more installed in the gracious
Country Lifestyle
drawing room of Sir Richard Lionnel's flat, that he had just lost a prime witness in a murder case.

It was Tuesday evening and Pompey had invited himself over for an 'after-work chat' as he put it. Jemima envied his aplomb. She herself was suffering from a feeling of irrational guilt that she had prematurely frightened Valentine to death by dragging his story from him, instead of letting him tell it all to Pompey. She knew that it was ridiculous: Valentine needed, indeed had deliberately sought out, her encouragement. Yet she was haunted by the memory of his pallid face, his groans as he contemplated the exposure of his private tastes to a mocking world.

'And you won't even pay atte
ntion to his last message,' she
concluded in a gloomy voice. '"He came back" - maybe someone came back to the flat, someone we don't know about.'

'Certainly he came back. Athlone came back. Your voice from the grave is most convincing,' Pompey responded happily.

Jemima's depression over the death of Valentine - and after all they had been friends long before Valentine proposed a professional relationship - was increased by the grotesque circumstances which had accompanied it. The detached kindness and carefully worded statement of Professor Leinsdorf hardly compensated for the irritation engendered by further contact with Dr Harman. What was more, the two women were not only staying in the same hotel, close to Adelaide Square, but as Dr Harman made absolutely clear, actually sharing a room.

'It iss, you understand, a very large room,' she stated in her usual ponderous manner which seemed to convey some threat even when the words were palpably innocuous. 'Professor Leinsdorf iss most generous. Each year we meet like this. We see only each other. And off course we do our work.' She shot a look of ferocious devotion in the direction of her companion. 'Each year it is Professor Leinsdorf who pays.'

All the same the two women proposed to give Jemima tea in the hotel lounge, an arrangement for which Jemima was duly thankful. Intimate contact with their domestic arrangements would only bring further embarrassment. Already Dr Harman could hardly allow the Professor to pour the tea without patting her hand; at one point she even pushed back one of the Professor's soft brown curls which had strayed onto her cheek.

'Yeah, it needs a good cut. I know it,' was all the younger woman said; she gazed speculatively at Jemima's corn-coloured bell of hair.

'John of Thurloe Place—' said Jemima hastily, hoping to fend off further intimacies from Dr Harman (whose own hair could have done with some attention).

The passions of others being notoriously unfathomable, Jemima reflected that she would probably never understand what drew the Professor, a charming woman by any standards, towards her uncouth watchdog; it was much easier to sympathize with the latter's evident infatuation. The attraction had to be in Dr Harman's mind, since in Jemima's humble opinion it could hardly lie in her personality or her appearance; no doubt the appeal of Dr Harman's thoughts on German economics, or whatever the Professor's special subject might be, was overpowering . . . although an annual idyll with the good Doctor would hardly be Jemima's idea of amusement, it had to be admitted that this intellectual approach was also to the Professor's credit. She was interrupted in these frivolous thoughts by a loud and almost girlish laugh from the Professor.

'I guess Irina has just never got over her younger sister earning more than she does!' she exclaimed. 'Why if she came to the States, she could put us both up at the Savoy
...
As it is I have to leave Henry once a year to look after himself. I'm always on at her to make the switch. It was just my good fortune I went to the States when I did.'

'Ach, no, Poupa—' Jemima could not help being extremely relieved that the adoration in Dr Harman's eyes had now been revealed as sisterly in origin. It was still slavish.

At Jemima's request Poupa Leinsdorf — as she must now learn to call her - ran through Valentine's last actions and stumbled words yet again.

'He looked very sick. He gave some kind of cry, more like a cry than a groan, would you say, Irina?' The doctor nodded, her enchanted gaze held to her sister's face. 'He half put out his hand, I guess he wanted water or something. I jumped up. You got up too, Irina, at that point.' The Doctor nodded again. 'I asked him if he needed some assistance. He didn't answer right away, just said nothing at all for approximately twenty seconds. Then he said, and this is my precise recollection, and I believe Irina will confirm it: "He came back." Those three words. Then: "I've got to tell her." Quite distinct, wasn't it, Irina? Then he slumped forward. The rest you know. He didn't speak again, nothing that could be understood as more than a groan. Irina thinks he muttered something like "Mother" or "Mummy" but I would not want to be too positive about that.'

Back with Pompey, who had already perpetuated the Professor's information in the form of a statement, Jemima tried rather hopelessly to think of any way in which Valentine's words were not peculiarly damning to Kevin John. Her heart was no longer in it. Even without the help of Valentine's last words - to which Pompey refused to pay attention - it was going to be very difficult to persuade Pompey that Kevin John had not committed the murder: the prime suspect now known (if not proved) to have been present at the scene of the crime.

'We'll get him,' said Pompey of Kevin John. 'Other witnesses will come forward. He'll confess. You see if he doesn't. You, my dear, have been most helpful in what you have remembered. Good memory inside that pretty head.'

'I hope so, Pompey,' said Jemima in a pious voice. 'It's a question of the trained mind rather than the pretty head, by the way. Like Dr Harman.'

'Oh myself, I like women to have both beauty and brains; no objection to that at all. I've made that quite clear to Mrs Portsmouth from the very start of Women's Lib. Any time she wants to go to the Open University, Adult Education, evening classes - you name it. No holds barred. Instead
of which she prefers to direct my
gardening out of articles she's read in the evening paper with her feet up. I ask you! Women simply won't grab their opportunities.'

Pompey then abandoned the elaborate teasing which appeared to give him much pleasure and reverted to his brisk manner.

'The Coroner's inquest opens tomorrow, by the way. Purely formal -you won't be needed. In view of our current enquiries, we'll suggest an adjournment. You see, now we know exactly what questions to ask Athlone. We know, for example - without being able to prove it, naturally - that he lied about his lunchtime visit to the flat. The net is closing, my dear. The net is closing. We're bringing him in for questioning again, right away. The only fly in our ointment at this stage is Punch Fredericks. He's been brought in on the act.'

Jemima whistled. 'Punch Fredericks! Very impressive. How did that come about?' The youngest of the three Fredericks brothers was a well-known radical solicitor interested in a number of social causes, including law reform; he was notorious, at least to the police, for believing in bail-for-everyone-including-murderers (as Pompey sardonically put it) and armed with the traditional will and energy of the Fredericks family, very often secured it.

'Friend of the gallery owner who looks after Athlone, I believe. Very rich, very left-wing, lives happily in Chelsea, you know the type. Creep? No, that's wishful thinking. Creed. At all events Creed is putting up Athlone, so he's probably hired Fredericks at the same time. Bail-for-every-one, indeed!' Pompey shook quite fiercely.

For the rest of the week Jemima abandoned her research in the British Library. This was not only the result of an aversion towards the scene of Valentine's death - Jemima would have thought it her duty to conquer that kind of feeling. No, the fact was that Jemima was in some doubt as to whether the Brighthelmet Press itself would survive with the sudden demise of its energetic proprietor-cum-chairman-cum-managing director. In its future the survival of her own contract was only one petty problem. Jemima herself was constitutionally incapable of working without, as it were, a deadline. She had once been prepared to toil unsociably for the whole of August, disappearing into a noiseless borrowed flat. The flat was no longer noiseless, thanks to the furore engendered by Chloe's murder. Now her actual motive for research had been removed by the death of her publisher. And what was more, she had lost two friends in a week.