A Coat of Varnish (12 page)

A constable had just come up the stairs, the man dispatched when Maria’s call had mystified the police station. The detective sergeant told him sharply to station himself just inside the drawing-room door, do nothing for the present, permit no one except the police surgeon and senior detective officers to touch or move any object in the room.

‘There’s a body there. She’s not a nice sight, I may as well tell you,’ said the sergeant, in an offhand, experienced fashion, giving an excellent impersonation of a case-hardened detective who took such things without a blench.

He was getting to work. He asked Maria where there was another telephone and told the police station in Gerald Road that the Detective Chief Inspector had to be informed. And the police surgeon as soon as the Chief Inspector approved. He’ll want to have a look himself first, Robinson said, becoming even more knowledgeable. Bodies don’t run away. The doctor can wait half an hour. While waiting, the sergeant proceeded to score up some credit for himself. There were others taking notes, but he felt he ought to have his own on the record. He was an arrogant young man, but Humphrey rather liked him.

Humphrey had to translate for Maria. He learned little that he didn’t already know, except that her husband was a waiter in a Fulham Road café. She had arrived that morning at her usual time, about 7.40. She had put a kettle on for coffee, and then went upstairs. She had noticed the drawing-room door was open. Then she had seen what they had all seen. She had noticed one other thing, when she went down again in search of Humphrey. The door of the garden room (that is the room giving on to the stairs which led down into the garden) was also wide open.

‘That will do nicely for the present. I don’t require either of you any more, thank you. The Chief Inspector will want to talk to you. Thank you again.’ The sergeant was enjoying his last minutes in charge. He was also polite in his offhand fashion.

‘Oh, I didn’t ask you. The next of kin ought to be informed. Can you tell me who they are?’

‘She has a son, Lord Pevensey. When I last heard about him, he was living in Morocco.’ Humphrey had met Lord Pevensey only once in his life.

‘In touch?’

‘He’s not been here lately, I think.’ Humphrey went on: ‘She really was in touch with her grandson, posted in Germany. He was visiting her a fortnight before.’ If it would help, Humphrey offered to ring up the divisional headquarters, and get in touch with Loseby.

By this time, half a dozen policemen were in the house, two of them in plain clothes. The local Detective Chief Inspector heard about Humphrey’s account and the possible exits and entries through the garden. He made telephone calls, had a conversation with Humphrey, made notes and told him with affable respect that there would be time for a formal statement later. It was all quick and practised. A police surgeon arrived, certified death, made his statement and left, while Dr Perryman joined Humphrey in the hall. Perryman was not allowed to go into the drawing-room but, as the young policeman conceded, could watch from outside.

‘This is a bad business,’ Perryman said to Humphrey, in a reflective manner, his fine eyes not focused on the body or anything inside the room.

More policemen were arriving. ‘I can’t do anything useful here,’ Perryman said to Humphrey, and they went downstairs.

‘Of course,’ Perryman observed, as though talking to himself, ‘she would have died soon anyway.’

‘She was healthy, wasn’t she?’

‘She was eighty-two. She might have lived a few more years. She might have died this summer.’

‘Anyway,’ said Humphrey, ‘this was an ugly way to die.’ That was the second time a remark of Celia’s left its echo.

‘It may have been more merciful than the way she was frightened of,’ Perryman said. ‘They don’t know how she died, do they? If that head wound killed her, she would have felt almost nothing. Not more than bumping her head against a wall. Then – no pain, just out. Some people die very easy.’

‘I hope she didn’t know who killed her.’

‘What difference would that make?’

‘It wouldn’t be good to die in fear.’

‘It would soon be over. And that’s the end.’ Dr Perryman said it as though he were talking to a patient. ‘Perhaps we make too much of death after all. Our ancestors lived with it more sensibly than we do, I often think. They didn’t try to pretend it doesn’t happen.’

All that was true, Perryman wasn’t a stereotyped man, his thoughts were his own, but Humphrey had had enough of them that morning. Just as he had enough of a piece of deviousness when he got on the telephone to Loseby’s headquarters. He was answered by a girl, presumably a WRAC, cool and friendly.

‘No, sir. Captain Lord Loseby isn’t here at the moment. He is in England on compassionate leave.’

Humphrey said: ‘Surely he had returned from compassionate leave two weeks before.’

‘That is so, sir, but I believe he was summoned back because of his grandmother’s condition last Thursday.’

Humphrey had spoken to the old lady on Saturday afternoon. She was in caustic spirits, walking strongly in the Square garden. She would have been surprised to learn that Loseby had been recalled to London on her account.

‘I can give you the London address we have for him, sir.’

The London address was 72 Aylestone Square, London, SW2.

What was Loseby playing at, one of his women? Humphrey didn’t doubt that he was capable of any kind of action. But this could be embarrassing. There were going to be police enquiries. Humphrey, like most others that day, assumed that this was a burglar’s killing, but the routine would check the movements of any connection of the old lady, certainly her grandson. The police would discover this story. Humphrey wasn’t certain whether it would be wiser to tell them first.

He felt worn down, not so much by the shock of that morning as by the gritty reticences round him. He hadn’t heard a straightforward utterance since he set foot in the ravished drawing-room. But he did hear one about half-past one, when Kate, skin flushed, eyes lit up, came, almost at a run, into his dining-room where he was eating bread and cheese.

‘I heard it on the one o’clock news,’ she said. ‘I suppose it’s true?’

‘Yes, it’s true enough.’

‘She’s been killed?’

‘Murdered.’

Kate might have been in tears, or in one of her tempers. She broke out, ‘It’s so bloody unfair. After being told that there was nothing wrong with her. Good news. And she only had ten days to enjoy it.’

It was curiously childish. He had never heard her so naïve, but he felt better for hearing it, and very fond of her.

A few minutes after Humphrey left the house, Detective Chief Superintendent Frank Briers entered. He asked a couple of quiet questions of the policeman on duty outside, gave a couple of quiet instructions. Any other entrances? There is another policeman outside the garden door? The same instruction was to be passed on to him. No one was to be allowed inside except his own officers and the technical people. Then Briers looked at the lock on the front door, said it must be changed, and went upstairs. He was followed by a young Detective Inspector Shingler, who had been sitting beside him in the police car. Shingler had already been allotted to the chief Scenes of Crime job.

Briers himself was still under forty. He was restlessly springy on his feet, exuding force and energy, middle height, built like a professional footballer, light above the waist, muscular thighs. His face was neat-featured, not specially distinguished to a spectator unless and until his eyes were caught. They weren’t the eyes others expected in a detective, not sharp and concentrated. For that the spectator would have done better to take a look, under the general air of composure, at Humphrey Leigh. Briers’ eyes were brilliant enough, deep-coloured, a startling blue. They were the kind of eyes, set under fine brow-ridges, that innocent persons expected to see in artists or musicians, and seldom did.

It was an accident that he had been given this new assignment. After the first survey, the local police station wasted no time. It was clear enough that the murder of Lady Ashbrook was bound to make the news. They tried to summon the Chief Detective of the Division. He was out on another case. Within minutes, the station made an appeal to Scotland Yard. Briers was by chance unoccupied, the appropriate rank, with a reputation already made, tipped to go higher. By 9.20 a good deal was already in train. He had sent off two men with whom he had worked before to get an office organised at the police station. Photographers and laboratory technicians were due to arrive. Briers’ favourite pathologist should be at the house before long.

Briers went alone into Lady Ashbrook’s drawing-room. ‘Give me ten minutes,’ he had said softly to Shingler. He stayed still, a yard or so from the body. His senses were alive. He was getting impressions as Humphrey had done not two hours before. Some of Briers’ impressions were similar to Humphrey’s, but imbibed with more purpose and concentration. It wasn’t the first time he had been inside a ransacked room: there were things to look for. Some of his thoughts were different from Humphrey’s. A suspicion hadn’t crystallised, but was somewhere, as it were in solution, at the back of his mind.

He remained still, except for the direction of his glances, which travelled from the body round the room. He was long-sighted, and the detail of the spilled-out objects thirty feet away he could make out as though it were bold print.

He didn’t take a note. Note-taking on the spot didn’t suit him. It seemed to shut out impressions which were lurking on the edge of observation. Perhaps that was a minor vanity, for he had faith in his memory. Although he carried a recording machine in his pocket, he rarely used it. He preferred to give reminders to Shingler, who could feed them into his own machine. Then photographs were the best recorders of all.

Soon the first photographs were being taken. After some more solitary moments, he called to Shingler: ‘Ready now.’ Shingler came in with a photographic officer. For the first series of shots, Shingler didn’t need instructions. The camera clicked, Lady Ashbrook was photographed more often and from more angles than ever in the past, even when as a young society beauty she had been caught by journalists after a supper party with the Prince of Wales. The body finished with, Briers told Shingler what shots he wanted round the room. The visual scouring clicked on.

Shortly after nine-fifty, the constable on duty outside let another man into the room. He was carrying a bag, his face was flushed. His first act was to take off his jacket and throw it back to the constable. ‘Too hot for this lark,’ he said in a euphonious tenor. ‘Sorry I’m late, Frank.’

‘You always are.’

In fact, he had come with maximum celerity. This was Owen Morgan, Professor of Forensic Science, who with the curious Anglo-Saxon lack of inventiveness about nicknames was known as Taffy. He was heavily set, fair, round-faced. He and Briers had worked together often. They had respect for each other, and a kind of protective friendship. Each thought the other a master of his trade. They found it necessary to express this by outbursts of sparring, or what used to be called ribbing. This didn’t seem particularly appropriate for either of them.

‘I suppose everyone’s made a mess of things already,’ Morgan said, as a thoughtful preliminary. He wasn’t referring to the casualty or the litter on the floor.

‘Oh, yes, our prints and traces, they’re all over the place.’ Briers was responding in kind.

‘Actually, Professor,’ said Shingler, in a placatory manner and a south-of-the-river accent, ‘nothing’s been touched. It’s all yours.’

‘That’s something, I suppose,’ Morgan said, as though displeased. He hadn’t met Shingler before, and Briers introduced them. Morgan said: ‘Well, let’s have a look.’

He put on a pair of near-transparent gloves, trod with elephantine delicacy over particles on the floor, and began to touch the body. Out of proportion to his bulky chest and stomach, his hands were small, delicate, quick-moving, adept. He pulled up an eyelid, glanced at the scalp wounds, sniffed like one who had just opened a good bottle. He twitched an arm, which was limp, all stiffness departed. He turned back the collar of the dress and exposed a bruise on the upper arm. Carefully he passed his fingers round the neck. He grunted, and said: ‘Nothing much in it for me.’ He was turning back to Briers. ‘It’s going to be your problem, not mine. Unless you know already.’

Briers shook his head. ‘Tell us. What do you get paid for?’

‘My God,’ Morgan broke out, ‘why aren’t you coppers given a course in medicine? If you were capable of taking it in. Have you looked at her face, man? Couldn’t you see the spots? And on the eyelids? It’s too bloody clear. Nothing in it for me.’

‘Come off it. You mean she was strangled?’

‘What else? Very easy with a woman that age. Almost certainly from in front, coming from her right-hand side. There was a bit of a struggle. One or two bruises. Not much good struggling at that age. I shall want photographs of the bruises, of course. Before I cut her up.’

‘So shall we,’ said Briers. ‘What about her head being bashed in?’

‘Done after death.’

‘How long after?’

‘Difficult to say. Not a great deal of blood. But it might have been done very soon after.’

‘Might have been a frenzy. We’ve seen that before, haven’t we?’

‘We have.’

They were both used to actions after a killing. More often than not, they would have said, they were not nice for the public to know.

‘She passed water, of course,’ Morgan commented. The other hadn’t seen him make an examination, but his nose was acute. ‘No defecation, I think. Her bowels can’t have been loose.’

‘Any semen?’

‘That I can’t tell you till I get her to the hospital.’ They were used to such consequences, too. They dropped into the formal textbook words. They made it that much more abstract, more hygienic.

Briers asked more questions; Shingler, anxious not to be left out, putting in his own. Had the body been moved after the murder and the blows on the head? Morgan thought not. The blood on the floor and the urine staining didn’t look like it. ‘You mean,’ said Shingler, ‘he just killed her, stove her head in afterwards and left her.’