An Expert in Murder (8 page)

dered at the life she led in that faded building, too near the top to be the lady of the house and not high enough to be the maid –

although this was the sort of house in which a maid’s services were no longer required. There must be thousands of women like her in London now, widowed or single and long past the age at which marriage would be a realistic prospect, living in reduced circumstances in a bed-sitting-room, staring out at life rather than taking part.

He considered waving but decided, on reflection, that a greeting from a stranger, particularly a well-dressed and affluent stranger, might be regarded as impudent or condescending, so he moved on.

A quick glance at his watch confirmed that there was plenty of time to make a detour to Westminster Bridge for a view of which he never tired, no matter what the weather. For once he was in no hurry to reach the New Theatre, where a long and no doubt argu-mentative day awaited him. That afternoon, he was due to make the final arrangements for the provincial tour of one of his longest-running productions and to discuss the West End staging of its author’s new play. He normally looked forward to such meetings, sure of his decisions and confident that those involved would trust his experience, but trouble was brewing with
Richard of
Bordeaux
. Admittedly, none of the problems were insurmount-able: his leading actor, who fancied himself – with some justification – as lord of the London stage, had changed his mind about the lure of the provinces in favour of the silver screen and wanted out of his contract, but Aubrey had no intention of releasing him; he would consider financing the film, perhaps, but only after John Terry had graced the likes of Manchester with his royal presence.

As for Josephine Tey, she was far too principled to be easy to deal with, although he admired and respected her writing and could see its long-term potential. In a reversal of his difficulties with Terry, the issue with Tey was getting her
into
the public eye, and that wretched trial had not helped. Not for the first time, he cursed himself for allowing it to happen. Knowing Vintner, he should have seen it coming.

In fact, those newer to the taste of success than Aubrey seemed to 52

have been transformed by their sudden notoriety – and not always for the better, in his opinion. The entire cast seemed to think that one hit play was enough to keep them in work for the rest of their professional lives, and all the bickering and tension was beginning to tire him; after all, he could usually find that at home. He knew he was perfectly capable of putting a stop to it, yet he felt uneasy about the confrontations ahead. If he had been a superstitious man, he might have said that to plan the play’s future before its current run was finished was to tempt fate, but he was far too old to start pandering to the more ridiculous notions of his profession. Having said that, perhaps tonight was the wrong time to indulge in a tradition of his own making. Whenever a play under his management entered its final week, it was customary for him to make a cameo appearance on stage, and tonight he was due to walk on as a guard in the final scene. The moment was supposed to be a celebration, the only part of the limelight that he ever allowed himself, and the idea – thought up in a frivolous moment by his favourite St Joan –

had always amused him. Today, it felt more like a curse.

His mood lifted briefly the minute he set foot on Westminster Bridge. He was by no means a fan of Romantic poetry, but he was willing to settle his differences with Wordsworth and concede that the earth had nothing fairer to show than this stretch of the river.

It had, of course, changed considerably since those words were written, but its beauty had not diminished: the view of the Houses of Parliament and Victoria Tower, with the majestic sweep of buildings which now lined Millbank as far as Lambeth Bridge, was truly splendid. Turning to look down-river, he admired in a different way the tall, grey outline of Victoria Embankment, dominated by a startling new clock tower and punctuated by the Savoy’s reassuring civility. His gaze fell on Somerset House in the background, and he was reminded that he really must track down the information he needed. The matter was becoming urgent.

As he stood there, Aubrey noticed how many people slowed their steps to appreciate the view. One young couple in particular drew his attention. They stood close together, holding hands under the cover of their coats and clinging on to an old umbrella as they 53

leaned over the edge to stare intently into the waters below. They spoke little, but when they did it was of hopes for the future; small things, perhaps, but the joy with which they looked forward to a life of intimacy was so unlike anything Aubrey had ever known that he felt the contrast physically, as a rebuke, and wanted that ordinary miracle so badly that he had to look away. His own marriage had never been the shared adventure of discovery that he had hoped for; neither had he and his wife settled into the easy companionship of middle age which often compensated for the boredom of earlier years. Left at home while he went to war or to work, she had had plenty of time to wonder why they were married, although she was far too well mannered ever to have asked the question aloud. Perhaps she hated to be wrong or was simply afraid of having to acknowledge that he was lonely too. Either way, the moment for second chances was gone, and a sense of waste had hovered between them for years. Worst of all, it seemed to have tainted the next generation. As far as he could tell from their sporadic and awkward communications, his son’s marriage was no more fulfilling than his own.

Maybe it was the gloom of the winter months, but he was frequently overwhelmed now by the feeling that his life had finally caught up with him, that the darkness which he had held at bay with the colour of stage artifice had, through that very medium, begun to return. This time, he sensed, the darkness would not be denied. Regret had long been the emotion with which he was best acquainted, but recently he had felt more than that: recently, he had felt afraid. How much of that fear was of his own making he was reluctant to admit but deep down he knew that he had risked too much, that the end could not always justify the means. In those tunnels he had seen damnation too often in the faces of others not to recognise it instantly when it stared back at him from the mirror.

He could stand the cold no longer, so retraced his footsteps along Bridge Street and turned into Parliament Street and Whitehall, where the morning was moving leisurely towards noon.

Before him, in the centre of the road and at the heart of a country’s grief, stood Lutyens’s extraordinary monument to the dead –

54

quiet, dominant and bearing witness to the greatest emotion that England had ever felt. It was fifteen years and more since the last shot was fired – long enough for the memory to become lazy – but cars still slowed as they passed, men on buses continued to bare their heads, and parents brought their children to stand quietly at the monument’s flower-covered foot, transferring a muted sorrow to the next generation. Forgetting for a moment his worries about the future, Aubrey took the deep purple iris from the inside of his raincoat and placed it gently on the steps, removing the dying flower that he had left there a week before. After a minute or two’s reflection, he moved purposefully off towards the thin, dark figure of Nelson’s Column.

London could be hard on the lonely, thought Esme McCracken as she sat at her window and looked down into the square below.

Thank God she had never been susceptible to the pointless melan-choly that a solitary existence so often tried to justify. If she were, she would scarcely have lasted long in this run-down, worn-out hole, where the inhabitants of the other rooms seemed to have given up on life at roughly the same time as the wallpaper. At night, when she eventually climbed the narrow stairs to the third floor and crawled into an uninviting single bed, she lay awake until the early hours, attempting to restore its faded pattern in her mind’s eye as an antidote to the scenes and conversations that raced in her head and warded off sleep. It was the only time she really paid any attention to her surroundings: the sparseness of the room, the deficiencies of the furniture – a sagging armchair, put under further stress by piles of newspapers and books, and an ugly, fourth-hand table, scratched beyond the endeavours of any polish – never bothered her. Why should they? She had her eye and her thoughts trained firmly on the future.

It was the cold that she most resented, bitter and raw at this time of year. The bars on her small electric fire, inadequate at the best of times, had not glowed for many days now, as every spare penny she earned was spent on words rather than heat. Each morning, on her way to work at the New Theatre, she would steal 55

into the second-hand bookshops to pore greedily over the shelves of new arrivals. Sometimes she was lucky, and managed to slide a slim volume of Ibsen or Chekhov under her coat while the shop assistant’s attention was taken by another customer. Reading the book later, as she sat at prompt corner, she felt no remorse over such small acts of theft, knowing herself to be a worthy recipient of the ideas contained in those pages. Better that they should fall into her hands than be wasted on people with full pockets but empty minds, or left, forgotten, to gather dust.

People seemed determined to shelter from life these days, she thought, to resist its joys and its pain in favour of a bland contentment. There was certainly no place in the West End for any play with a soul. She despised the romantic nonsense that everyone seemed so taken with. If she were only given the chance, she knew she could make them understand what they were missing. But, as things stood, Daviot – and others like her – sat smugly in the auditorium, revelling in a success which was undeserved and planning another pointless fairy-tale to sedate the crowds, while she was taken for granted backstage, working long hours just to ensure that fame ran smoothly.

The harsh roar of a motorcycle cut through the air beneath her window as she got up to switch on the light. The gloom of the morning made the bulb’s efforts to illuminate the room less feeble than usual, but there was still precious little cheer to be had.

Shivering, she took the blanket off the bed and draped it round her shoulders before picking her way across a carpet of discarded paper and returning to the battered trunk that functioned as a makeshift desk. Her typewriter – a Good Companion, bought for twelve precious guineas – looked out of place in that tawdry room, but it was more real to her than anything else there and it had served her well: she was finally ready. Looking up from the page, she smiled bitterly at the sight of Bernard Aubrey, strolling into view as if in response to one of her perfectly timed cues. It amused her to think that he should take the trouble to notice her here, in this anonymous room, when at the theatre he passed her every day without even bothering to remember her name. It had always 56

seemed her fate to go through life unnoticed or easily forgotten, but he would recognise her soon enough. She sealed the envelope and picked up her coat, slamming the door on her way out.

Rafe Swinburne slid quickly and silently from tangled sheets with the ease born of long practice, and saw with relief that the slender young redhead whom he left behind – Sybille, he thought she had called herself, or Sylvia – remained fast asleep. In bed and out, she had proved to be more entertaining than most of the young women who hung around Wyndham’s stage door at the end of every performance, waiting for young actors like him to emerge, but he had no wish to continue the relationship into a second day.

There was, he had discovered, a seemingly inexhaustible supply of sweet young things who expected him to live up to his stage role as caddish young lover, and he was more than happy to oblige.

Acting had many more advantages than a salary of thirty pounds a week and he had always been the ambitious type, as greedy for adoration off stage as on. Last night, he had been adored until well into the early hours.

He dressed quietly in the bathroom, examining his mirror-image over a shelf crammed with creams and powders. Mercifully, his reflection confirmed that he needed nothing more than a splash of cold water to make himself presentable. He was, as he well knew, a strikingly handsome young man, tall and dark with lean features that were softened to just the right degree by hair worn slightly longer than was considered fashionable. Had his eyes held something warmer than their habitual cynical indifference, Swinburne would have been beautiful; nevertheless, he had about him an unmistakable air of self-possession that caught the eye of both sexes.

Carrying his shoes until it was safe to make a noise, he took a pre-written postcard from the pocket of his coat and left it on the hall table – a nice touch, he always thought, and one guaranteed to ease the disappointment of an early departure. Gently, he opened the front door and, with his exit assured, slipped down the stairs.

Ignoring the rain and kneeling to tie his laces, he glanced around 57

to get his bearings and was surprised to find himself in Hammersmith. The journey from the West End to these rented rooms had not seemed very far last night, but then he had been racing through London with a pretty girl’s arms around his waist and his mind on little else but a craving for sex which did not distinguish between postal districts. In the cold light of day, he wished fate had coupled him with someone a little closer to home.

It was already gone noon and there was nowhere near enough time before the matinee to go back to his own rooms on the south side of the river and change, let alone to drop in on John Terry as he had hoped – no, as he needed – to do before this afternoon’s meeting. Swinburne rather enjoyed the reputation he had for being late, but he was not prepared to push his last-minute appearances to impossible limits and risk missing his first entrance. He would have to make do with a telephone call en route to the theatre.

He had found to his great relief that his prized motorcycle – a 1932 Ariel Square Four – was still at the end of the passage where he had hurriedly left it just after midnight. Long before it became such a fashionable leisure activity, Swinburne had loved motorcycling with a passion. As a child, his father had driven him all over the countryside on the sturdy Scott model that he had kept when he was invalided out of the war, perching his young son on the special stand at the front which once sported a machine gun but which had been cleverly adapted into the most thrilling of vantage points for a tiny boy. His earliest memories were of the excitement he felt as he swung round with the handlebars, confident in his father’s deft handling of the machine. Never again had he felt so close to danger, and yet so safe. By then, it was just the two of them – he had lost his mother during the war and had to rely on his father’s stories for most of what he knew of her – and the bond was unbreakable. Many years later, when his father died, he had ridden the Ariel for hours, not caring where he went but desperate to escape the most powerful grief he had ever known. It proved to be unshakeable, though, and it had travelled with him ever since.