The Dark Room (23 page)

She wrapped her arms about her thin body and hugged herself tightly. ‘You know it is. You were listening.’ She gave a shuddering sigh. ‘She wouldn’t hear me
out either, but at least we didn’t scream at each other. I said, why had she never mentioned him before if she’d known him so long, and she said there were a million things she’d
never mentioned. It was her life and there was no rule that compelled children to tell their parents everything. I blame her father,’ she said in a drained voice, turning her shoulder to
freeze Charles out. ‘She couldn’t leave home quick enough to get away from him, so of course there were things we would never know.’

The Superintendent absorbed this in silence, careful to keep his face neutral. ‘When did she tell you she was moving in with Leo?’ he asked after a moment.

‘During that telephone call. “We’re going to live together until we get married,” she said. “Leo has a house in Chelsea and I’m moving my stuff in
now, but I don’t want you to tell Dad because I can’t take any more lectures.” Then she said they were going to France until the fuss died down and that she’d phone her
answer-machine regularly for messages.’ She fingered her handkerchief, pulling out the crumples. ‘She said we’d stop worrying once we met Leo, and promised to bring him down as
soon as they came home. And I said, what about poor Jinx? And Meg said Jinx would survive because she always has. Then we said goodbye.’ She held the handkerchief to her eyes.

To Frank’s ears, this description of Meg was an unflattering one and he wondered if Mrs Harris was aware of the picture she was painting. ‘Tell me about Meg,’ he
invited. ‘What was she like?’

Her sad face brightened. ‘She was a beautiful person. Kind, thoughtful, very loving. “Don’t worry, Mummy, I’ll always be here,” that’s what she
used to say.’ The tears welled again. ‘She was so intelligent. She could do anything she set her mind to. “I’m going places,” she always told me. Everyone adored
her.’

Frank turned to the vicar. ‘Is that how you saw her, sir?’

Charles glanced at his wife’s rigid back. ‘She had faults, Superintendent, we all do. She was a little self-centred, perhaps, rather too careless of other people’s
feelings, but, yes, she was a popular girl.’ He folded his hands in his lap. ‘Our son Simon could give you a better idea of what she was like. He’s worked in various London
parishes over the years and saw far more of her than we did. As Caroline told you, we effectively lost her when she went to university. She used to come down two or three times a year, but other
than that we had very little contact.’

‘Is he still in London, sir?’

‘No, he was given a parish of his own two years ago. It’s a village called Frampton, ten miles to the north-east of Southampton.’ He lifted the cuff of his cassock
to look at his watch. ‘But he’ll be at the vicarage in Littleton Mary by now. I thought it would be easier for us if he came up.’

‘Easier for you, you mean,’ said Caroline unsteadily, swinging round to face him. ‘You think he’s going to take your side.’

Charles shook his head. ‘There’s no question of anyone taking sides, Caroline. I hoped we could support each other.’

Her cheeks blazed suddenly. ‘There’s been too much secrecy. I can’t stand it any more.’ She reached out a claw to clutch at the Superintendent’s sleeve.
‘I knew we’d lost her,’ she said. ‘I prayed we’d only lost her to Leo, but in my heart of hearts, I knew she was dead. I kept asking myself why Jinx had tried to kill
herself.’ Her eyes rolled alarmingly, and Frank glanced towards the WPC for assistance, but Caroline went on in an unsteady voice: ‘She did the same thing after Russell was murdered,
you know, but that time she tried to starve herself to death. If it hadn’t been for her father, she’d have succeeded. This is Jinx’s doing, Superintendent. She won’t have
her men taken away from her.’

‘You’re talking nonsense, Caroline,’ said her husband severely.

‘Oh, am I?’ she snapped. ‘Well, at least I’m not a hypocrite. You know the truth as well as I do. We’re talking about jealousy over Meg, Charles,
something you know all about.’

He pressed his hands to his face and breathed deeply for several seconds. ‘I really don’t think I can continue, Superintendent,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘I do
apologize. Can I urge you to talk to Simon? I’m sure he’s the best person to give you an objective view of this sorry business.’

Fraser, who was sitting a few yards apart, looked up and caught Cheever’s eye. ‘Sorry business’ was a peculiarly cold-blooded way to describe a brutal murder, but
then it hadn’t occurred to either of them at that stage how much the Reverend Charles Harris had disliked his daughter.

Nightingale Clinic, Salisbury – 1.00 p.m.

‘Are you busy, Dr Protheroe?’

He glanced up from his desk to find Jinx hovering, poised for flight in the doorway, a look of indecision in her dark eyes. ‘We’re very informal here, you know. You can
call me Alan if you want.’

The idea of anything so intimate appalled her. ‘I’d rather stick with Dr Protheroe, if you don’t mind.’

‘Fine,’ he said indifferently. ‘Come in then.’

She stayed where she was. ‘It’s not important. I can come back later.’

He gestured towards a vacant armchair. ‘Come in,’ he said again. ‘I could do with a break from the paperwork.’ He stood up and walked around the desk,
ushering her in and shutting the door behind her. ‘What’s up?’

With her escape route barred, Jinx accepted that the die was cast. She crossed the parquet flooring but, instead of sitting down, took up a position by the window and gazed out
across the garden. ‘My father phoned to say he wants me out of here. I wondered why. Do you know?’

‘No,’ he said, resuming his seat and swinging round to look at her back.

‘Did you phone him about the police visit?’

‘No.’

She turned round to study his face closely, then nodded in relief. ‘Then I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Why does he want me to leave?’

‘I suppose it may have something to do with the fax I sent him.’ He reached inside his top drawer and removed both the fax in question and the reply he had received that
morning. ‘Read them,’ he invited. ‘My extraordinarily anodyne letter is typical of a hundred more on file, so why should your father find it threatening?’

She perched on the edge of the armchair and read both pieces of paper before handing them back to him. ‘What was your brief?’ She chewed nervously on the side of her
thumb.

‘What he says. To let you recover at your own speed. He didn’t want psychiatrists meddling.’

Why not? What was there to fear from psychiatrists this time? What did Adam think she could tell them? What
could
she tell them?
‘Then it must be your invitation
to talk about Russell’s death,’ she said slowly. ‘Wild horses wouldn’t make him do that, and certainly not with me present.’

‘What’s he afraid of?’

‘Nothing.’

Why did she keep lying to him? he wondered. And why this need to protect her father when it was so very clear she thought he’d murdered her husband? ‘There must be
something, Jinx, or it wouldn’t require wild horses to drag it out of him,’ he said reasonably.

‘There’s nothing,’ she insisted. ‘It’s just that, as far as Adam’s concerned, Russell didn’t exist. His name’s never mentioned. The
episode is forgotten history.’

Protheroe mulled this over. ‘You obviously think your father views your tragedy as a “forgotten episode”,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But is that how you
see it, too?’

She didn’t answer.

‘Tell me about your father’s background,’ he suggested next. ‘Where did he come from?’

She spoke in quick, jerky sentences. ‘I only know what Betty’s told me. Adam never talks about his past. He was born in the East End of London. He was the third of five
children. His father and two older brothers were merchant seamen – and all died when their ships were sunk in the North Atlantic. His younger brother and sister were evacuated to Devon while
he remained with his mother to face the blitz. His education was minimal. He learnt more from the black marketeers working out of the docks than he ever learnt in school. By the end of the war he
had amassed a list of contacts abroad and enough money to set up as an importer. The first goods he shipped in were silks, cottons and cosmetics – they arrived on his seventeenth birthday. He
doubled his money overnight by flogging the lot on the black market, and he’s never looked back. He began life as a crook – knew the Kray twins very well. That’s all I
know.’

He believed her. If Adam Kingsley was anything like she described him, he was a man who compartmentalized every aspect of his life.
Rather like his daughter
. It would be
interesting to discover whether he, too, closed doors on dark rooms and threw away the keys. The chances were high that he did. ‘As far as Adam’s concerned, Russell didn’t
exist,’ Jinx had said.

‘What happened to his mother?’ Protheroe asked now.

‘I don’t know. He didn’t have much to do with her after he married my mother. As far as I can make out, neither family approved of the marriage.’

‘And the brother and sister? What happened to them?’

‘They went back to London after the war, presumably to live with their mother. The only thing Adam has ever said on the subject is that he’s always regarded them as
strangers because he and they grew up apart.’

‘Does he still feel like that?’

She slipped down into the chair and laid her head against the back of it. ‘He hasn’t spoken to either of them for over thirty years. Uncle Jo emigrated to Australia and
hasn’t been heard of since, and Aunt Lucy married a black man. My father severed all his ties with her the day she walked up the aisle.’

‘Because her husband was black?’

‘Of course. He’s a racist. Betty used to know Lucy quite well when they were all younger. She told me once that Adam tried to stop the wedding.’

‘How?’

With shaking fingers, she lit a cigarette. ‘Betty was very drunk. I’m not sure she was telling the truth.’

‘What did she say?’

She took quick pulls on the cigarette, considering her answer. ‘That Adam tried to scare Lucy’s fiancé off with a beating,’ she said in a rush, ‘but
that Lucy went ahead and married him anyway. It might be true. He really does hate black people.’

Alan watched her for a moment. ‘How do you feel about that?’

‘Ashamed.’

He waited. ‘Because your father’s a bully?’ he suggested.

She could taste hot, sweet bile in her mouth and drew in a lungful of smoke to mask it. ‘Yes – no. Mostly because I should have sought Lucy and her family out years ago
and made a stand – but I never did.’

Veronica Gordon was right about the eyes, he was thinking. What the hell was going on inside her head that she could look so frightened and sound so composed? ‘Why
not?’

She turned her face to the ceiling. ‘Because I was afraid the whipping-boys would be punished if I did.’

‘Meaning your brothers.’

‘Not necessarily. Any whipping-boy will do,’ she said flatly. ‘If I’d sought out my aunt, then Betty would have been taken to task because she knew Lucy as a
child and would have been accused of being the instigator. But it’s more often the boys than not.’

‘Are we talking literally or metaphorically? Does your father physically beat your brothers?’

‘Yes.’

‘So was Russell another whipping-boy, do you think?’ he asked mildly.

He caught her unawares and she stared at him in shock. ‘My father didn’t kill him,’ she said, her voice rising. ‘The police ruled him out very early
on.’

‘I was talking metaphorically, Jinx.’

She didn’t answer immediately. ‘I don’t think you were,’ she said, lowering her gaze, ‘but it doesn’t make any difference anyway. Russell was
never punished for my shortcomings.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I suspect you were punished for his.’ He toyed with his pen. ‘How much do you know about your mother? Why did both families disapprove
of the match, for example?’

‘Her people were middle class and my father’s were working class. I presume it was straightforward snobbery on her side and inverted snobbery on his, and I don’t
suppose it helped that he made money out of black marketeering.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘I know he adored her.’

‘Did he tell you that?’

‘No, he never talks about her.’

‘Then how do you know?’

‘Because Betty told me. Her name was Imogen Jane Nicholls, she was the only child of a doctor, privately educated, and very much a lady, and he has photographs of her all over
his office walls.’

He thought of the name on Jinx’s file cover. Jane Imogen Nicola Kingsley. ‘Do you look like her as well?’

‘Of course I do,’ she said with a kind of desperation. ‘Adam set out to re-create her.’

He couldn’t fault the desperation – it was there in her voice – but he doubted it had anything to do with her mother. ‘Even your father can’t perform
miracles, Jinx,’ he said with a touch of irony, as he watched the ash on her cigarette lengthen and curl. ‘I suspect that little scenario is more in your stepmother’s mind than
his. We all need ways of coming to terms with a partner’s indifference. None of us is immune from pride.’ He nudged the wastepaper basket towards her with his toe. ‘You should
know that.’

The Vicarage, Littleton Mary, Wiltshire – 1.15 p.m.

Fraser watched Cheever’s courteous and sympathetic handling of this devastated family with a far more willing admiration than he had felt for Maddocks yesterday. The
Superintendent knew as well as he did that there were some strange undercurrents at work, but never for one moment did he pressure either of the Harris parents into saying what they were.

They drove in convoy back to Littleton Mary, with Mrs Harris and a motherly WPC in the leading car, and himself, Cheever and Mr Harris in the one behind. There was little
conversation. The vicar clearly found talking difficult, and the Superintendent was content to leave him to his thoughts. Where ‘initiative’ was Maddocks’s watchword,
‘patience’ was Cheever’s.

In retrospect, of course, Fraser had to ask himself whether Maddocks’s insensitive approach wouldn’t have been more appropriate, for it was Cheever’s willingness to
take his time that gave rise to the events that followed. Maddocks would have squeezed every last drop of information out of them, irrespective of the trauma they were suffering, and Charles could
not have conspired with Simon to keep the information about Meg and Russell’s affair to themselves. But would justice have been better served, Fraser always wondered, if they’d known
about it then instead of later?