The Company She Kept (20 page)

The old lady waited until they had availed themselves of tea before saying, ‘Jessie Crowther tells me that tiresome gel Angie Robinson has got herself murdered. I assume that's why you're here – but what can it have to do with me?'

‘When someone dies in suspicious circumstances, we have to go back a long way, Mrs Wilbraham, and she did occasionally visit here, we've been told.'

‘Very occasionally. She was of limited appeal to me – I did not encourage her.'

‘I'd like to talk about another matter first,' he said, uncomfortably conscious of the dry heat of the airless room, stuffy with Kairouan carpets on the mosaic-tiled floor and couches and ottomans heaped with cushions. Sweat was beginning to prickle out over his body. ‘What can you tell me about Irena Bron?'

If the name had startled the old woman, she gave no sign. She stared at him impassively from the depths of her high-seated armchair that was designed for easy rising, but was also a little like a throne in this room, an illusion made more apparent by the carved, mother-of-pearl and ivory-studded screen behind it and the huge mask of the goddess Tanit on the wall above. She was like an ancient lizard, unmoving, unblinking, except for the eyes, black and alive and missing nothing. Not much like the warm-hearted, amusing, gregarious woman she'd been described as.

‘Irena?' A sigh escaped her. ‘That's a name I haven't heard for a long time.'

‘Exactly how long, Mrs Wilbraham?'

‘Exactly? That's a tall order for someone of my age, young man! My memory isn't what it was.'

This was evidently a pronouncement not meant to be taken seriously. Everything about her said she was still sharp as a needle. Moreover, there were indications that she was still working: writing materials were spread out over a table in the corner, there was even a small tape-recorder, presumably because she would find writing or typing difficult with those arthritic fingers. He suspected she had lost none of her critical faculties and that her memory was as clear as ever.

‘I haven't set eyes on Irena for something like fourteen or fifteen years. Has she done something she shouldn't?'

‘That would surprise you?'

‘Nothing about Irena would surprise me,' she answered drily. ‘She was a law entirely unto herself. No steadfastness of purpose, she'd just as soon act on a whim of the moment ... But you must be fair with me and tell me what this is all about, otherwise, I warn you, you won't get a word out of me.'

He saw that he must tell her the truth immediately. She would have to know soon, anyway. He supposed that a person who had reached the age of fourscore years and ten must have learned to live with and accept the idea of bereavement and death, their own and that of those close to them – but she might have loved Irena Bron and be devastated, how could he know?

He told her as gently as he could that Irena Bron, too, was dead, and that he had come to seek permission to look for her body in the lake. It did not seem to upset her as much as he had feared it might, though she closed her eyes momentarily as though against a spasm of pain.

‘Dead?' she murmured, almost to herself. ‘I knew it had to be so.'

‘You knew, Mrs Wilbraham?'

‘Tell me,' she countered. ‘Tell me everything.'

‘I would prefer to ask a few questions first.'

She shrugged and spread her misshapen hands. He saw that they trembled very slightly, with age or apprehension, it wasn't possible to tell. ‘Very well.'

‘Who was she?' Mayo began. ‘And how did she come to be living here?'

‘She was the daughter of Miloslav Bron, a man my husband and I worked with for several years in Tunisia, before the war. We lost touch during the war. And then one day Irena appeared on my doorstep with a suitcase, saying her father was dead and had left her penniless. That was no surprise. Milo's nature was always feckless.'

She delivered the judgement reprovingly, but a barely perceptible smile lifted the corners of her mouth and there was a long pause, as if she had travelled far away in her mind. Mayo had to bring her back to the present with a gentle prod: ‘She stayed with you?'

‘Irena? Oh yes. He had left a letter, you see, recommending her to me, rather like a helpless child – though she was nearly forty and more than capable of fending for herself! However, for his sake, I willingly gave her a temporary home. Look behind you, on the chest. You'll see a photo that might interest you. If you've seen Milo, you've seen Irena.'

Abigail picked up the framed snapshot, glanced at it and passed it over to Mayo. ‘That's my husband, the bearded one,' the old woman said with pride. ‘He was Dr Alfred Wilbraham. I don't suppose you've heard of him unless you're particularly interested in archaeology, but he was in his day one of the most eminent people in his field.'

The photo must have been taken fifty or more years ago, at some archaeological dig in the desert. The camera had caught Kitty and Milcslav Bron laughing together, with the short and stocky, plus-foured Alfred Wilbraham standing a little apart. Bron looked dashing and swarthily handsome; the young Kitty, with an abundance of curling hair and an impish smile, was pretty and petite. The two looked as though they were used to sharing laughter.

‘How long did Irena Bron stay here?'

‘In the event, eighteen months. I never had any intention of supporting her indefinitely and she was, I must admit, difficult to live with at times. I was quite relieved when she announced she had obtained a position in the City and was leaving.'

‘What do you think made her decide to leave?'

‘I have no idea. Madeleine Freeman suggested it and I suppose it just appealed to her at the time. She was a creature of whim.'

‘She left on August the fifteenth, 1979, to be precise? And you gave a farewell dinner for her the night previously?' She raised to her lips the glass of mint tea that stood by her side and sipped. ‘If you say so. I don't really remember, it's all so long ago. It would have been somewhere around that date, I imagine.'

‘And the others who were present were,' Mayo said, ticking them off on his fingers, ‘Madeleine Freeman and Angie Robinson, your handyman, Thomas? Yes? Felix Darbell?' She nodded. ‘And Sophie Amhurst?'

‘Yes, Sophie, too.' At the roll-call of names she smiled and he saw the charisma was still there after all. It was easier now to see why they had loved her, all those young people she had drawn around her, and why they had wanted to protect her, keeping Irena's death from her.

‘I'm going to have to ask you to tell me what happened that night, Mrs Wilbraham.'

‘Nothing happened, that I recall. I was very tired and went to bed early.'

‘We've been told there was some trouble, some sort of table-tapping session, ending in a quarrel.'

‘I know nothing about that, I was in bed,' she repeated stubbornly.

He had no option but to accept what she said. ‘Did you hear from Irena after she left your house?'

She shook her head. ‘Not even a letter?'

‘No.'

‘And you didn't think of making inquiries?'

She made a gesture of impatience. ‘She might have been anywhere in the world, any of the places she'd lived in before she came to me. She – and her father – were like gipsies, never staying in any place for long. No, I was too old, even then, to go to all the bother of making inquiries.'

‘Forgive me, but I noticed it didn't surprise you to learn she was dead?'

‘When you've lived as long as I have, very little surprises you.' She began to speak quickly so that her words slurred slightly. ‘It's difficult to remember after all this time but yes, I think I began to believe she must be. I realized even Irena would not be silent for so long. Irena less than anyone, perhaps. I never knew a woman more voluble, in at least three languages! I'm afraid I used to find her tiresome on the whole, an excitable sort of temperament, you know, though that was only to be expected, considering her background ...' She broke off with a sigh. She was beginning to look very tired, and alarmingly flushed across her cheekbones. ‘More tea, Mr Mayo, Miss Moon? Please help yourselves.'

How much of what she's said was true, or how much had she come to believe it was? She hadn't asked for details of how Irena Bron had died and he wondered if she had quite understood what his request about the lake meant. When Abigail had performed the rites with their teacups, he said, ‘You do understand that Irena's death was not due to natural causes?'

‘If you're going to drag the lake, I assume it wasn't,' she answered, suddenly sharp. ‘But Irena, I assure you, was
not
the sort to take her own life. It must have been an accident.'

There was a pause. Mayo said, ‘Felix Darbell has confessed to her murder.'

It was a long time before she spoke. ‘Has he indeed?' she said at last. ‘Well, he never liked her. He thought she was after my money when I died.' She added with a brief, wintry smile, ‘They all did.'

Money. Never far behind, money. And because the house was neglected and decaying and the two old women lived a frugal existence, it didn't mean there wasn't any. Did Kitty's wealth lurk there, in the background, as the key to all this? Another idea occurred to him. Was it possible that Irena Bron had been Kitty's daughter, the result of a liaison with the dashing Miloslav Bron? Was that why she had put up with her for so long?

‘And was she, ma'am?' he asked bluntly. ‘After your money?'

‘I'd have soon sent her packing, if she had been!'

And so vehemently was it said that he immediately dismissed the idea of a mother/daughter connection. Yet this question had disturbed her. She was avoiding looking at him and her gaze was travelling slowly round the room, resting briefly on her treasures as if they were, ultimately, the only things left to draw comfort from. ‘Murder,' she repeated, ‘that's a very terrible thing.'

He said bluntly, ‘What made you leave Flowerdew so suddenly, ma'am, and return to Tunisia? Immediately after Irena had gone?'

‘Oh,' she returned, shrugging, ‘why does one do anything? I wanted to go, so why not? That's the consolation of age, one is no longer bound by convention. It doesn't matter now, anyway. And now, I'm sorry, I'm very tired, you'll have to excuse me. I'm really too old for all this. Recalling the past can be very exhausting.'

Mayo stood up immediately and so did Abigail. It was difficult to discern whether she really was too tired to go on, or was simply making excuses to get rid of them, but she had been for the most part cooperative and he had to accept her dismissal. He wasn't in the business of intimidating old ladies. Besides, when you'd lived nigh on a hundred years, he reckoned you were entitled to tell nosey-parker coppers to shove off when you'd had enough of them. He would come again with more questions and hope to find out just what it was she was concealing.

‘Thank you for seeing us, Mrs Wilbraham. I'm sorry we've had to trouble you.'

When they were at the door, her voice spoke behind them. ‘But you haven't told me what all this has to do with Angie Robinson? Has – has Felix murdered her, too?'

He considered her for a moment. ‘He swears that he didn't.'

She contemplated her swollen hands, crossed in her lap. ‘Poor Felix. He was always his own worst enemy.' There was a frozen look on her old face as she raised it. ‘I suppose it's always easier the second time.'

Soon after that, a flurry of activity began by the old boathouse; frogmen arrived with their gear, the pathologist came, and a clutch of detectives. Police vehicles and the ambulance blocked the road outside the house. Finally, the lake at Flowerdew surrendered its secrets. What was left of Irena Bron was recovered from its murky depths. The old house, which had probably seen much worse in its long history, slumbered on.

By this time Angie Robinson's bank manager had at last returned from whatever business (or pleasure) had been keeping him away, and Mayo managed to fix up an interview with him. He was called Smythe, a youngish man of rather stout proportions, who took himself seriously and sported mutton-chop whiskers like Abraham Lincoln or Mr Murdstone. A harmless affectation, the whiskers gave him a certain weighty authority by putting years on his age and boosting his trustworthiness rating by several points.

‘We – the bank, that is – are her executors,' Smythe told him, intimating that he would be willing to cooperate in the matter of letting Angie's affairs be known. ‘How can I help you?'

The first thing Mayo learned was that Angie Robinson had deposited all her personal papers with the bank several weeks ago, which explained their absence among her personal effects. The second was that there was a very substantial amount of money in her account, and that she'd either been financially astute or had been well-advised in the management of it. In addition to a sizeable capital on which interest had accrued, there were stocks, shares and investment trusts bringing in further dividends. Her salary from the Area Health Authority had been paid in monthly, and her outgoings were modest, apart from a large withdrawal recently to finance the purchase of her new Astra. If her intention had been to blackmail Felix Darbell, it appeared to have been for reasons other than a need for money, though where the capital had come from in the first place was a question to which Mayo would need an answer.

‘There's also the property, of course,' added Smythe, presenting him with the answer before he asked.

‘Property? Which property?'

‘The house where she lived in Kilbracken Road, for a start. That should fetch a reasonable price when the market looks up again. There's a continuing demand for that sort of substantial family house. Not too big, though I dare say it'll need a bit of modernizing – new bathrooms and so on. I don't think Miss Robinson's ever done anything of that sort. Just as her parents left it.'