A Certain Justice (22 page)

“It didn’t occur to you that the blood must be Mr. Ulrick’s?”

“Not then. Not later either. I should have realized at once that it couldn’t be Miss Aldridge’s blood. It seems odd now, but I think I tried to put the picture out of my mind, not to think about it.”

“But you knew that Mr. Ulrick had a pint of blood stored in his fridge?”

“Yes I knew. He told Miss Caldwell and she told me, I think it was generally known in Chambers — among the staff, that is — by the end of Monday. Mr. Ulrick was always very careful about his health. Terry said something like ‘Let’s hope he never needs a heart transplant or God knows what we’ll find in his fridge.’”

Piers said: “People tended to make a joke about it?”

“Not a joke exactly. It just seemed an odd idea, taking your own blood into hospital.”

Dalgliesh seemed to rouse himself from a reverie. He asked: “Did you like Miss Aldridge?”

The question was as unexpected as it was unwelcome. Naughton’s pale face flushed. “I didn’t dislike her. She was a very fine lawyer, a respected member of these Chambers.”

Dalgliesh said gently: “But that isn’t really an answer, is it?”

Naughton looked at him. “It wasn’t my job to like or dislike, only to see that she got the service she was entitled to. I know of no one who wished her ill, sir, and that includes me.”

Dalgliesh said: “Can we go back to yesterday? Do you realize that you may have been the last person to see Miss Aldridge alive? When was that?”

“Just before half past six. Ross and Halliwell, the solicitors who gave her a great deal of work, had sent round a brief. She was expecting it and rang to ask me to bring it up as soon as it arrived. I did that. Terry had run out to get a copy of the
Evening Standard
just after six and I took that up too.”

“And the
Standard
was complete? No one had extracted part of it?”

“Not that I noticed. It looked untouched.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing, sir. Miss Aldridge was seated at her desk working. She seemed perfectly all right, just as usual. I said good-night and left her. I was the last of the staff to leave but I didn’t set the alarm. I could see a light in Mr. Ulrick’s office downstairs, so I knew he’d be leaving after me. The last person out usually sets the alarm and then when the cleaners arrive they disconnect it while they’re working.”

Dalgliesh asked him about the cleaning arrangements. Naughton confirmed what Laud had already told him. The work was in the hands of Miss Elkington’s Domestic Agency. Miss Elkington specialized in the cleaning of lawyers’ offices and employed only the most reliable women. Their two cleaners were Mrs. Carpenter and Mrs. Watson. They would have been there last night, arriving at their usual time of eight-thirty. The hours were eight-thirty until ten on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Dalgliesh said: “We shall, of course, be speaking to Mrs. Carpenter and to Mrs. Watson. One of my officers is fetching them now. Do they clean the whole of the building?”

“Except, of course, for the upstairs flat. They have nothing to do with Mr. Justice Boothroyd and Lady Boothroyd’s flat. And sometimes they can’t get into one of the rooms here if a member of Chambers chooses to lock it. This is very rare, but it can happen if there are highly sensitive papers about. Miss Aldridge did occasionally lock her door.”

“Which has, of course, a key, not a security device.”

“She disliked those press-button systems. She said they spoilt the look of Chambers. Miss Aldridge always had a key and I had a duplicate. I keep duplicate keys to all the rooms in this cupboard here.”

During their interview there had been intermittent messages coming through by fax. Now Naughton glanced anxiously towards the machine. But there was a last question before they let him go.

Dalgliesh said: “You have earlier described exactly what happened this morning. You left your house in Buckhurst Hill at seven-thirty to catch your usual train. You would expect to be in the office by about eight-thirty, but it was nine before you rang Mr. Langton. There seems to be about thirty minutes unaccounted for. What were you doing in that time?”

The question, with its implication of facts withheld, of a long-established routine inexplicably broken, could not have been more unwelcome, however gently put. Even so, the response was surprising.

Naughton looked for a moment as guilty as if he had been accused of the murder. Then he recovered himself and said: “I didn’t come straight into the office. When I got to Fleet Street there were things I needed to think over. I decided to go on walking for a time. I can’t remember exactly where I went, but it was along the Embankment and then up to the Strand.”

“Thinking about what?”

“Personal things. Family matters.” He added, “Mostly about whether I’d accept a year’s extension here if it were offered.”

“And will it be?”

“I’m not sure. Mr. Langton did talk about it, but of course he couldn’t promise anything before it was discussed at Chambers meeting.”

“But you expected no difficulty?”

“I can’t say. You had better ask Mr. Langton, sir. There may have been members who thought it was time for a change.”

Piers asked: “Was Miss Aldridge one of them?”

Naughton turned and looked at him. “I think her idea was to have a practice manager instead of a clerk. One or two chambers have appointed them and I believe it’s working well.”

“But you hoped to stay on?” Piers persisted.

“I thought I did, as long as Mr. Langton was Head of Chambers. He and I came here the same year. But it’s different now. Murder changes everything. I don’t suppose he’ll want to stay on. This could break him. It’s a terrible thing for him, a terrible thing for Chambers. Terrible.”

The enormity of it seemed suddenly to have overwhelmed him. His voice broke. Dalgliesh wondered whether he was about to cry. They sat in silence. It was broken by the sound of hurrying footsteps and Ferris came in.

Keeping his voice controlled, he said: “Excuse me, sir, but I think we’ve found the weapon.”

T
he four members of Chambers waited together in the library, for the most part without speaking. Langton had taken the chair at the head of the table, more from habit than from any wish to preside. He caught himself glancing at each of his colleagues’ faces with a momentary intensity which he was half afraid they would detect and resent. He saw them as if for the first time, not as three familiar faces, but as strangers involved in a common catastrophe, stranded in some airport lounge, wondering how each would react, curious about the circumstances that had so fortuitously thrown them together. He found himself thinking: I’m Head of Chambers and these are my friends, my brothers in the law, and I don’t even know them. I have never known them. He was reminded of a day when he was fourteen — it had been his birthday — and he had for the first time looked in the bathroom glass and subjected every detail of his face to a long unsmiling scrutiny and had thought: This is me, this is what I look like. And then he had remembered that the image was reversed and that never in all his life would he see the face that others saw, and that perhaps it was more than his features that were unknowable. But what could one tell from a face? “There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face. He was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust.”
Macbeth
. The unlucky play, or so actors claimed. The play of blood. How old had he been when they had studied it at school? Fifteen? Sixteen? How odd that he could remember that quotation when so much else had been forgotten.

He glanced across the table at Simon Costello. He was sitting at the far end and continually pressing back his chair as if to rock himself into equanimity. Langton looked at the familiar pale square face, the eyes which now seemed too small under the heavy brows, the red-gold hair which could flame in high sunlight, the powerful shoulders. He looked more like a professional rugger player than a lawyer, though not when he wore his wig. Then the face became an impressive mask of judicial gravitas. But, thought Langton, wigs metamorphose us all; perhaps that’s why we’re so unwilling to get rid of them.

He looked across at Ulrick, at the slight, delicate face, the undisciplined brown hair falling across the high forehead, the eyes keen and speculative behind the steel-rimmed spectacles, yet sometimes holding a look of gentle melancholy, even of endurance. Ulrick, who could look like a poet, but could rasp out his words with the occasional venom of a disappointed schoolmaster. He was still sitting in one of the armchairs beside the fireplace, with the same book spread open on his closed knees. It didn’t look like a legal tome. Langton found himself unreasonably curious to know what Ulrick was reading.

Drysdale Laud was looking out of the window with nothing of him visible but a perfectly tailored back. Now he turned. He didn’t speak but gave a short interrogative twitch of his eyebrow and an almost imperceptible shrug. His face was perhaps paler than usual, but otherwise he looked as he always did, elegant, confident, relaxed. He was, thought Langton, easily the best-looking man in Chambers, perhaps one of the handsomest at the Bar, where confident good looks were not unusual before they hardened into the peevish arrogance of old age. The strong mouth was sculptured under the long straight nose, the hair a dark disciplined thatch flecked with grey above deep-set eyes. Langton found himself wondering what his relationship with Venetia had really been. Lovers? It seemed unlikely. And wasn’t there a rumour that Venetia was sexually occupied elsewhere? A lawyer? A writer? A politician? Someone well known. He must have heard something more definite than this vague recollection of old gossip, perhaps even a name. If so, like so much else, it had escaped him. What else, he wondered, had been going on that he hadn’t been aware of?

Lowering his eyes to look away from his colleagues and down at his own clasped hands, he thought: And what about me? How do they see me? How much do they know or guess? But at least so far in this emergency he had acted as Head of Chambers. The words had come when he had needed them. The event, so dramatic in its horror, had imposed its own response. Drysdale, of course, had almost taken over, but not quite, not altogether. He, Langton, had still been Head of Chambers; it was to him that Dalgliesh had turned.

Costello was the most restless. Now he got up from his chair, almost overturning it, and started again a deliberate pacing along the length of the table.

He said: “I don’t see why we have to stay cooped up here as if we were suspects. I mean, it’s obvious someone from outside got in and killed her. It doesn’t mean it was the same person who decorated her with that bloody wig — bloody in more than one sense.”

Looking up, Ulrick said: “It was an extraordinarily insensitive thing for anyone to do. It isn’t particularly pleasant having blood taken. I very much dislike the needle. And there’s always a risk, however small, of infection. Of course, I provide my own needles. Blood donors make out that the procedure is painless, and no doubt it is, but I have never found it agreeable. Now I shall have to cancel the operation and start all over again.”

Laud said, half amused, half protesting: “For God’s sake, Desmond, what does it matter? All you’ve lost, however inconvenient, is a pint of blood. Venetia’s dead and we’ve got a murder in Chambers. I agree it would have been more convenient had she died elsewhere.”

Costello stopped his pacing.

“Perhaps she did. Are the police sure that she was killed where she was found?”

Laud said: “We don’t know what Dalgliesh is sure about. He’s hardly likely to confide in us. Until he knows the time of death and the hours for which we are expected to provide alibis, I suppose we have to be considered suspects. But surely she was killed where she was found? I can’t see a murderer carrying a dead body through the Middle Temple just to leave it in Chambers for the purpose of incriminating us. Anyway, how would he get in?”

Costello began again his vigorous pacing. “Well, that’s not going to be difficult, is it? We’re hardly security-conscious here, are we? I mean, you can’t exactly describe this place as being secure. I frequently find the front door ajar or even standing open when I arrive. I’ve complained about it more than once but nothing gets done. Even the people with security buttons on their inner doors don’t bother to use them half the time. Venetia and you, Hubert, have refused to have them fitted. Anyone could have got in last night — walked into the building and up to Venetia’s room. Well, someone obviously did.”

Laud said: “It’s a comforting thought, but I don’t somehow think Dalgliesh is going to believe that this murdering intruder knew where to find the full-bottomed wig or the blood.”

Costello said: “Valerie Caldwell did. I’ve been wondering a bit about her. She was terribly upset when Venetia wouldn’t take her brother’s case.” Looking round at their faces, suddenly stern, and Laud’s disgusted, he said feebly: “Well, it was only a thought.”

Laud said: “Best kept to yourself. If Valerie wants to mention it to the police then it’s up to her. I certainly shan’t. The suggestion that Valerie Caldwell could have had anything to do with Venetia’s death is ludicrous. Anyway, with luck she’ll have an alibi. We all will.”

Desmond Ulrick said with a note of satisfaction: “I certainly haven’t, that is not unless she was killed after seven-fifteen. I left Chambers just after seven-fifteen, went home to wash, leave my briefcase and feed the cat, then returned to have dinner at Rules in Maiden Lane. Yesterday was my birthday. I’ve had dinner at Rules on my birthday since I was a boy.”

Costello asked: “Alone?”

“Of course. Dinner alone is the proper end to my birthday.”

Costello sounded like a cross-examiner.

“Why bother to go home? I mean, why not go to the restaurant straight from here? A lot of trouble, wasn’t it, just to feed the cat?”

“And to leave my briefcase. I never check it in when I have important papers and I greatly dislike leaving it under my chair.”

Costello persisted: “Did you book?”