Ellis Peters - George Felse 02 - Death and the Joyful Woman (7 page)

“I happened to see you leave the premises with Miss Hamilton last night,” said George, returning the smile. “I was in the hall when you left.”

“Good, that puts us in a very strong position. I wish all the other problems were going to be as easily resolved,” said Shelley wretchedly. “This is a beastly business, Mr. Felse.”

“Murder usually is, Mr. Shelley.”

The word pulled him up motionless for a moment. “Is that absolutely certain, that it’s murder? The official statement leaves the issue open, and your man this morning was very discreet. Well—” He had resumed his climb, and turned right in the broad panelled corridor on the first floor. “I won’t pretend I’m surprised, everything pointed that way. At the moment I can’t realise what’s happened. I can think and understand, but nothing registers yet. It’s going to take a long time to get used to his not being here.”

“I can appreciate that,” said George. “You’ve worked with him a good many years. Known him, perhaps, better than anyone, you and Miss Hamilton. You’re going to miss him.”

“Yes.” He let the monosyllable stand alone, making no claims for his affection; if anything, he himself sounded a little surprised at the nature of the gap Alfred Armiger had left in his life. He tapped on the secretary’s door, and put his head into the room. “A visitor for you, Ruth,” he said, and went away and left them together.

She rose from behind her desk, a tall, quiet woman in office black which had suddenly become mourning black, her smooth dark hair parted in the middle and coiled on the back of her neck. Twenty years she’d been in Armiger’s service. There wasn’t much she didn’t know about him and his family, and maybe to understand all is to forgive a good deal, at any rate. Her calm was as admirable as ever, but her face bore the marks of shock and strain. He saw her fine black brows contract at sight of him, in a reflex of distress and reluctance, but she made him welcome none the less, and sat down opposite him in front of her desk, instead of withdrawing behind it, to mark her abdication from her official status.

“I’ve come to you as the person who can best help me to understand the family set-up here,” said George directly. “Anything connected with Mr. Armiger’s circle and affairs may be of vital importance now, I know you realise that. As one who is in a position to be fair to both of them, will you tell me the facts about Mr. Armiger’s quarrel with his son?”

She set an open box of cigarettes and a heavy glass ash-tray on the edge of the desk midway between them, and allowed herself a moment for thought before she answered. He had time to take in the character of the room, which from long association had taken on her strong, austere colouring. The small black wall-clock with its clear, business-like face and good design was of her choosing, so were the elegant desk fittings. And there were two large framed photographs on the wall, and one smaller one in a stand-up frame on the desk, all of groups of boys from the probation officer’s club. Two of the pictures she herself had probably taken at some summer camp; the third showed half a dozen boys grouped round her at a party on the club premises. She looked entirely at home among them, firm and commanding still, but flatteringly handsome and feminine, guaranteed to make any unstable sixteen-year-old feel six inches taller every time she allowed him to light her cigarette or embrace her in a foxtrot. Waste of an able woman, thought George, twenty years running nothing more personal than this office; she ought to have had a couple of promising boys of her own to worry about, instead of picking up the casualties after the kind of wastrel family that has a dozen and neglects the lot.

“There were faults on both sides,” she said at last, a little tritely after so much thought. She felt the inadequacy herself, and smiled. “But in reality Mr. Armiger himself was responsible for all of them. I’m sure I needn’t tell you that he was a most difficult man, whether as an employer or a parent. It wasn’t wilful, he simply could not see another person’s point of view. He was honestly convinced that everything and everybody ought to revolve about him and do what he expected of them. As a child Leslie was dreadfully spoiled. He could have anything he wanted provided it didn’t cross his father’s will, and while he was a child of course there wasn’t any real clash. Every accomplishment such as his painting, everything he shone at, every superior possession, only flattered his father. And he was never punished for anything unless it annoyed his father, you see. After Mrs. Armiger began to be an invalid and kept to her room they asked me to move into the house. Mr. Armiger used to spend more of his time at home then, and manage a good deal of his business from there, before this place was completed. I won’t say I didn’t do my best to straighten up the accounts, the few years I was there, but it was a bit late to take Leslie in hand by then, the damage was done. Well, as soon as Leslie began to grow up and need a life of his own the clashes began, as you can imagine. They fought spasmodically for four or five years before the break came, and all the earlier fights Mr. Armiger naturally won. All the effective weapons were on his side. But when the issues at stake became more and more important it didn’t work out that way any longer. Leslie paints very well, he wanted to go in for it seriously, but his father wouldn’t let him, he made him come into the offices here. Everybody had to fall in with
his
plans. Leslie was supposed to marry Kitty Norris and go into beer in an even bigger way than his father. And before they’d finished fighting out the battle about his painting, he’d met Jean and there was an even bigger row brewing up.”

“He got to know her right here, in the offices?”

“At first, yes, and then they began seeing each other casually, not even secretly, and Mr. Armiger was furious. There was a terrible scene, and he ordered Leslie not to see her again, and laid down the law flat about what his future was to be, toe the line or go. I don’t think he meant it then, he was only trying to bring Leslie to heel, but this was the real issue at last, and it broke all the rules. Leslie should have given in and promised to be a good boy. Instead, he went right out and took Jean dancing and got himself engaged to her on the spot.”

“Not the best possible prospect for a marriage,” suggested George, “if he walked into it simply as a way of rebelling against his father.”

“It wasn’t that,” she said, shaking her head decidedly. “All his father had done was make him realise what was at stake, how big it was and how very much he wanted it. And as soon as he recognised it he grabbed it, like a sensible boy, and hung on to it, too, though the repercussions were hair-raising. He walked right in here to his father’s office the next day, and stood in front of his desk, and just blurted out like a gunshot that he was engaged. Maybe that’s the only way he could get it out at all. Mr. Armiger really thought, you know, even then, that he could simply order him to break it off. When he found he couldn’t I expected a heart attack from pure shock. Leslie dug his heels in and said no, no, no, and went on saying no. He couldn’t believe it was happening to him. When he really grasped the idea, he threw them out, and that time he did mean it. All right, he said, if you want her, if she’s worth that to you, take her. Take her out of here now, this minute, and neither of you need ever come back. And Leslie said O.K., that suited him, and he went right downstairs and did just that, bundled Jean into her hat and coat and walked out with her. She stayed in her lodgings and he went to a hotel, and they spent the time while they waited to get married looking for somewhere to live. Leslie went to the house just once more, to collect his things, but as far as I know he never did see his father again. He couldn’t find anything better for them than furnished rooms, and when it came to getting a job, of course, he’d no qualifications and no training. The only thing he’d taken seriously at Oxford was his painting. He had to go to work more or less as a labourer. I’m afraid he’s collected all the arrears of discipline he missed in one dose,” she said ruefully. “If he comes through it intact you can say he’ll be able to cope with anything else life may throw at him.”

“Would he ever have relented?” asked George.

“Mr. Armiger? No, never. Crossing his will was an unforgivable blasphemy. I can imagine him as a senile old man in the nineties, perhaps, turning sentimental and wanting a reconciliation—but never while he had all his faculties.”

“Did anyone try to reason with him at the time?” She smiled at that, rightly interpreting it as meaning in effect: did you?

“Yes, Ray Shelley broke his head against it for weeks, and Kitty did her best, too. She was very upset, she felt almost responsible. As for me, I know a rock when I see one. I didn’t say a word. First because I knew it would be no good, and secondly because if by any chance he did have a sneaking wish to undo what he’d done, arguing with him would only have made him more mulish than ever.”

“Did you by any chance see the letter Leslie wrote to his father two months ago?” asked George.

The level dark eyes searched his face. “Did Leslie tell you about that?”

“No, his wife did. I haven’t yet seen Leslie.”

Quietly she said: “Yes, I saw it. It wasn’t at all an abject letter, in case you don’t know what was in it. Rather stiff-necked, if anything, though of course it was a kind of capitulation to write at all. They’d obviously only just settled for certain that Jean was going to have a baby, and the poor boy was feeling his responsibilities badly, and I suspect feeling very inadequate. He told his father the child was coming, and appealed to him to help them at least to a roof of their own, since he’d robbed them of the one they’d hoped to have. I don’t know if you know about that?”

“I know,” said George. “Go on.”

“Mr. Armiger made a very spiteful reply, acknowledging his son’s appeal like a business letter, and repeating that their relationship was at an end, and Leslie’s family responsibilities were now entirely his own affair. It was deliberately worded to leave no hope of a reconciliation, ever. He pretended he’d had no idea Leslie ever wanted the barn, but then he ended by saying that since he was interested in the place he was sending him a souvenir of its purchase, and it was the last present they need ever expect from him. As a would-be painter, he said, Leslie might find it an appropriate gift. It was the old sign, from the earlier days when the house used to be an inn.”

“The Joyful Woman,” said George.

“Was that its name? I didn’t know, but that accounts for it. I saw it when Mr. Armiger brought it in for the people downstairs to pack. It was a rather crude painting of a woman laughing, a half-length. They found it in the attics when the builders moved in on the house. It was on a thick wooden panel, very dirty and damaged, the usual kind of daub. One of the firm’s cars took it and dumped it at Leslie’s landlady’s house the day after the letter was written.”

Jean had said nothing about the gift, only about the curt and final letter. But there might be nothing particular in that omission, since the gift was merely meant to be insulting and to underline what the letter had to say. This is all you need expect from me, living or dead, and this is all you’ll ever own of The Joyful Woman. Make the best of it!

“Leslie didn’t write or telephone again?”

“Never again as far as I know. But I should know if he had.”

And all day, thought George, I’ve been writing off a certain possibility because I felt so sure that, firstly, if Leslie did go and ask for an interview Armiger wouldn’t grant it, and secondly, if by any chance he did choose to see him it certainly wouldn’t be to greet him with backslapping heartiness, champagne and a preview of his appalling ballroom. But maybe, after all, that was exactly the way he might receive him, rubbing salt into the wounds, goading him with the shoddy miracles money could perform. On a night when triumph and success were in the air maybe this was much more his mark, not direct anger but this oblique and barbaric cruelty. “He’ll be interested to see what can be done with a place like that, given plenty of money and enterprise—” “He was fair hugging himself.”

“Miss Hamilton, have you got a reasonably recent photograph of Leslie?”

She gave him a long, thoughtful look, as though she was considering whether he could need such a thing for any good purpose, and whether, in any case, denial could serve to do anything but delay the inevitable. Then she got up without a word, and went behind the desk, and brought out from one of the drawers a half-plate portrait, which she held out to him with a slight, grim smile shadowing the corners of her mouth. It had at some time been framed, for George saw how the light had darkened the pale ground slightly, and left untouched a half-inch border round the edges. More recently it had been torn across into two ragged pieces, and then carefully mended again with gum and Sellotape. The torn edges had been matched as tenderly as possible, but the slash still made a savage scar across the young, alert, fastidious face.

George looked from the photograph to the woman behind the desk.

“Yes,” she said. “I fished it out of his wastepaper basket and mended it and kept it. I don’t quite know why. Leslie has never been particularly close to me, but I did see him grow up, and I didn’t like to see the last traces of him just wiped out, like that. That may help you to understand what had happened between them.” She added: “It’s two years old, but it’s the only one he happened to have here in the office. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be any use looking for any of those he had at home.”

George could imagine it. A much-photographed boy, too, most likely. He saw bonfires of cherubic babies, big-eyed toddlers, serious schoolboys, earnest athletes, self-conscious young men-about-town, Armiger’s furnace fed for hours, like a Moloch, on images of his son.

“Thank you, Miss Hamilton. I’ll see that you have it back,” was all he said.

The face was still before his eyes as he went out to his car. Leslie Armiger was not visibly his father’s son. Taller, with long, fine bones and not much flesh. Brown hair lighter than his father’s curled pleasantly above a large forehead, and the eyes were straight and bright, with that slight wary wildness of young and high-mettled creatures. The same wonder and insecurity was in the long curves of his mouth, not so much irresolute as hypersensitive. No match for his father, you’d say on sight, if it came to a head-on clash either of wills or heads. But in spite of the ceremonial destruction of his image, young Leslie was still alive; the bull had pawed the ground and charged for the last time.