Last Nocturne (39 page)

‘Working.’ Eugenia grimaced.

‘Aren’t you going to say hello to Miss Dart, Sophie?’ asked Isobel. For answer, Sophie burst into tears. Isobel put her arms around the child. ‘Whatever is the matter?’

‘Isobel, I think you should wait, she’ll tell you later,’ said Susan, looking warningly at Eugenia.

‘I’ll go,’ Eugenia said, but nobody seemed to hear her. Isobel’s attention was focused on what Sophie was trying to say. The little girl’s English was fragmented but was improving daily since it was the only language, apart from French, spoken between the three of them, but it was difficult to understand what she was saying now through the flood of tears.

Susan went to kneel by the sofa. ‘Now, now, Sophie, my lamb.’

Sophie, who had been clinging to Isobel like a limpet, sat up suddenly and began to beat her fists against her chest. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about Theo, why didn’t you?’ she choked.

Isobel closed her eyes. ‘Susan – you didn’t—?’

‘No, no, of course not!’ Susan cried. ‘She read it this morning in the weekly newspaper the fish was wrapped in.’ She threw a sidelong glance at Eugenia. ‘Maybe we should talk about it later, seeing we have a visitor.’

Eugenia stood up. ‘I really must go,’ she said firmly, but Isobel motioned to her to sit down again.

‘The newspaper said someone has killed Theo!’ Sophie’s tears had turned to sobs. Sophie, who rarely cried, who kept her feelings bottled up tight inside her. ‘Why? Why did they have to kill him? Was it the man who killed Mama?’

It was as if some lightning bolt had momentarily struck them all to silence. ‘No one killed your mama, Sophie,’ Isobel said at last. ‘She fell in the snow and hit her head.’

‘No! She didn’t fall.’ The child could barely speak now for the sobs. ‘Someone pushed her. I saw. He pushed her, hard.’

‘You were sleepwalking, Sophie,’ Isobel said gently.

Her voice rose. ‘I was awake! I frightened myself awake.
I saw
. He pushed her.’

Isobel gathered the child into her arms, pressing her head against her shoulder.
‘Soyez tranquille, mon enfant. Sh, sh.’
Gradually, the sobs began to subside into hiccupping shudders. ‘Sophie, who did you see? It wasn’t—?’

‘Not Struwwelpeter,’ Sophie gulped, incomprehensibly to Eugenia.

‘A book,’ Isobel explained. ‘A nasty, frightening book.’

Struwwelpeter, who had been consigned to the flames long ago, gone up the chimney in a hiss of blue and green. Part of the hideous past, like sleepwalking and being hauled around Europe in draggletail clothes and sometimes with not enough to eat.

‘It was – it was a m-m-man…in a big coat. Then Theo…came out of the door…and p-picked me up.’

‘Which man?’

‘I don’t know, I don’t know. I don’t
know
!’ Sophie tried to bury her head against Isobel once more, but after a few moments Isobel lifted her chin and made her look at her.

‘Sophie?’

For a long time, she gazed at Isobel, then whispered, ‘Did he – did he kill Theo as well?’

‘Who, Sophie? Who was it you saw? You
do
know who it was, don’t you?’

‘I t-told Theo but he said I mustn’t tell anyone else…just yet. It was our secret.’

‘Theo would want you to tell me now, you know he would, don’t you?’ Silence. ‘Was it Viktor?’ asked Isobel.

After a long time, barely audible, came the small, terrified answer.

The coals in the fireplace subsided quietly into a heap of pink ash.

Lombard Street is silent of its daytime traffic, a street devoted to commerce which loses its identity at this time of night. A tall, overcoated figure approaches one of the handsomest, if not the largest, of the buildings, and pauses before the steps, looking at its façade as though he has never seen it before, although throughout his working life it has been more familiar to him than his own front door. Painted, black wrought-iron railings flank the bank of steps, and two stout black iron posts at the base are each surmounted by a lion rampant, painted in gold. He walks up these steps as he has walked thousands of times before. The door is enormous, solid, panelled, meant to impress; for reasons lost in obscurity, it is a carved wooden copy of the Baptistery doors in Florence. The frontage of the building is not defaced by vulgar signs: the few persons not already aware of what goes on in this building can read the bank’s name on the windows, which are discreetly fitted with etched ground glass to preserve privacy, and upon which the august name is engraved in intricate curlicue letters: Carrington’s.

Carrington himself, the Great Panjandrum of this establishment, pauses at the top of the steps. He has keys, but at this hour of the night the door is bolted on the inside as well, so he must press his gloved finger on the discreet bell at the side. He waits. The clocks and bells and chimes of London, from the sonorous sounds of St Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside to all the lesser churches in the streets and alleys of the City, begin to sound the first hour of ten. As the cacophony finishes, his summons brings forth the night watchman in a fury from the rear of the premises, followed by a boy bearing a bull’s eye lantern and keeping well behind through caution.

Mollified to find it isn’t the cheeky larking about of street urchins which has disturbed him from brewing his tea, and seeing who stands there, the watchman turns respectful. After a few words, he touches his cap and disappears from whence he came. Presently, from inside, there is the sound of keys being turned, the rasp of heavy bolts being drawn back.

Disregarding the modern, ascending lift with its concertina wrought-iron doors which has only recently been installed, Julian mounts the two flights to his own room, his eyrie on the top floor, divests himself of his coat, puts his gloves inside his hat, and his walking stick into the umbrella stand by the door. He sits at his desk, the light of the one green-shaded electric lamp directed onto a neat stack of paper in front of him.

He collects his thoughts.

The concert last night, at the Albert Hall, had been a mistake. Or at least,
The Dream of Gerontius
had. With hindsight, a crass choice. The sweeping melancholy of Elgar’s magnificent music had clearly been too much for Isobel. Unmistakable evidence that he was losing his sensitivity. Losing everything. Hope, sense of right and wrong. (Although he had still obtained a malicious little kick in acknowledging Edwina from a distance in company with that fop Aubrey, in imagining what she would have thought had she known who his companion was.)

It was a pathetic folly to believe he could ever have got away with everything. Yet until today he had believed he had achieved it. Until that telephone call an hour ago, from Edward Ireton. Until then, what he had done had retreated into the far reaches of his consciousness; they were there, those incidents, but remembered as if once viewed on a cinematograph, something which has been done by another person, an actor. How easily one can adapt to living a half life.

He uncaps his gold fountain pen and begins to write, slowly, in his careful, almost copperplate script. He believes he owes an explanation, to put himself in the right light, at least to Isobel. Besides, he is a tidy-minded and methodical man who can leave nothing half-completed, even this.

My dear Isobel
…

His lamp glows clear through the window. Outside, in the street, the man who has been shadowing him moves back into the darkness of a doorway, and waits.

An hour before, across a cluttered deal table at the police station, under the yellow glare of the gaslights, the immaculate Edward Ireton (who had proved elusive and had only just now been tracked down) had uneasily faced the searching glance of Chief Inspector Lamb. A further unnerving presence was the stolid Sergeant Cogan, who sat next to the Inspector with an expressionless face and pencil and notebook at the ready.

‘I have asked you to come here, Mr Ireton, because I want to know why you lied to me about the gun which shot Eliot Martagon being taken from your drawer.’

‘It was no lie. It was stolen.’

‘But not by Mr Martagon.’

For a long time Ireton said nothing, and Lamb waited for what was to come. Ireton soon gave in under pressure. His eyes swivelled from one man to another. What he saw there made him begin speaking, fast. Once started, he seemed to have difficulty in stopping. ‘When Eliot was found shot, I knew straight away that the gun he’d used had to be mine. I looked and sure enough, it was gone. Eliot must have found it, I thought, and yet…the very idea of him shooting himself was somehow – unacceptable. Gradually, it came to me that he wasn’t the only one who might have had the chance to take the gun. I thought hard and remembered that Julian Carrington had come to the Pontifex a couple of days before to run through the figures Eliot had drawn up for selling the gallery. His fountain pen had been leaking and he asked for some blotting paper. I was busy with something else at the time and without thinking about it I called over my shoulder that he would find some in the right hand drawer. The desk is old and the drawer runners have become worn. If you’re not careful you can pull it right out. He obviously didn’t do that, just far enough to see what was behind the blotting paper. I really felt quite sick when I thought about it.’

‘Not sick enough to mention your suspicions to us?’

‘What good would that have done? Eliot was dead anyway. Wasn’t it better for everyone to let sleeping dogs lie?’

‘Even though it meant letting a murderer escape? Regardless of the distress to his family? You really believe that?’ The sheer self-centredness of the man enraged Lamb. He looked down at his papers until he could bring himself to speak more calmly. ‘Who is financing your purchase of the gallery?’ he asked abruptly.

Ireton opened his mouth, shut it and finally admitted, ‘Carrington’s bank.’

‘I see.’ They regarded each other. The gas fire popped and spluttered. Ireton’s face had acquired a yellow tinge.

‘Wasting police time is an indictable offence, Mr Ireton,’ Lamb said curtly, at last. ‘And blackmail even more so. I could charge you with both, but I have more important things to bother with at this particular moment.’

Cogan closed his notebook with a snap and at the signal Ireton stood up – or rather jerked to his feet, looking more like a rabbit than ever, a very frightened white rabbit this time. ‘Is that all?’

‘It is for the moment. But expect to hear from us later.’

My dear Isobel
…

Julian has been staring into space, wondering how to go on. He sits, unmoving and absorbed, looking at the first verse of a poem he seems to have written down beneath the salutation, though he doesn’t remember doing so. But he is a reader of William Blake and often finds that his words are apt and stick in the mind. He strikes it through, puts the sheet to one side and begins again. This time his attempt at concentration is more successful. His pen gradually covers sheet after sheet of paper, the scratch of it the only sound in the quiet room.

The building is eerily silent but even so it is a while before the sound of the ascending lift intrudes itself into his self-absorption. He swivels himself round in his chair as the door opens after a sharp rap, barely a knock, and Chief Inspector Lamb walks in, followed by two other men, more obviously policemen than he is; a big heavy man and another, also tall but more slightly built and keen-faced. ‘Sergeant Cogan’, says Lamb, ‘and Constable Brownrigg.’

‘What’s the meaning of all this?’ Carrington hears his own voice and despises himself because even to his own ears it sounds blustering.

Lamb takes a few more steps into the room. ‘Mr Carrington, we are here to question you regarding the murder of Eliot Martagon and the death of Miriam Koppel. You can talk to us here, or you can make your statement down at the station. Whichever you prefer.’

There is nothing he can say, or wishes to. He looks down at the desk, at his discarded first attempt at a letter. The words of the poem he had written jump up at him from the page:

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow
.

‘Well, Mr Carrington? Which is it to be?’ The three policeman stand around, more intimidating than if they were seated.

Julian rouses himself. After what Ireton had told him on the telephone, he knows the game is up. He shakes his head as if to clear it. ‘I was not responsible for Miriam Koppel’s death.’

This man is, amongst other things, Lamb reminds himself, adroit at staying out of trouble. When they had spoken previously, he had denied any knowledge of anything that had happened at Silbergasse 7 and he’d smoothly lied by implication about not living in Vienna at the time – though that was factually true enough, since he had apparently only been there briefly on business and had gone back to London the next day. Yet, in one of those letters Isobel had written to Martagon, she had referred to him being there on that fatal night, a few words remembered by Lamb when speaking to Susan Oram. He had spent the evening with Isobel Amberley and had escorted her home, and though he had left long before little Sophie, sleepwalking, had stepped out into the snow, it was inconceivable that he had heard nothing of the affair later.

The silence continues, broken only by the heavy shifting of Sergeant Cogan from one foot to the other. When it becomes apparent that Julian is going to say nothing more, Lamb takes up his questioning again. ‘When I asked you about the night Miriam Koppel died, you let me believe you were not in Vienna. What did you have to conceal by lying about it?’

Julian throws out his hands. Then, in a few emotionless words, after the policemen have at last disposed themselves on various chairs around the room and prepared themselves to listen, he tells them how it was.

It had been an accident, for which no one could blame him. Snow and ice were dangerous enemies, encountered all the time in Vienna. His conscience is clear. Her death could not be laid at his door. The Vienna police had in the end believed it was an accident – and these policemen, too, would be bound to believe it when he had explained.