A Coat of Varnish (16 page)

‘I’m only guessing. You’d have to get someone to do an expertise.’ Humphrey was betraying his tinge of linguistic pedantry: that was what expertise meant. He was irked by the English knack of appropriating a French word and using it blandly wrong. ‘I guess ten or twenty thousand pounds the two, maybe more.’

‘Pointless,’ said Briers. ‘He couldn’t sell them.’

At that time, Humphrey wasn’t certain that his friend was concealing some of his thoughts, nor what they were. Briers had a gift for talking at some distance off the point with complete openness. He did tell Humphrey the discovery that there had been three hundred pounds’ worth of notes in Lady Ashbrook’s drawing-room and that she was said to pay her bills in currency.

Humphrey interrupted. ‘I think she was close about money. Morbidly close, maybe.’

Briers stored the remark in his computer memory and then went on: ‘If the haul he got was £300 in cash and a bit of silver, it wasn’t much to finish her off for. Or put her out of her misery, if you like.’

‘No,’ said Humphrey. ‘In her way – it wasn’t anyone else’s way – I’d say she enjoyed her life.’

The apparatus was already in action, Briers told Humphrey, and didn’t have to explain. Professional criminals the police knew all about. It meant listening to their sources all over the London underworld, checking on prison gossip, being certain who was in, who was out. It was like a peculiar and laborious piece of scholarship. It was also very much like a lot of security work in Humphrey’s old office. Only the practitioners in a profession knew how much grind had to be done, hour following hour, just as part of the day’s work.

A few tips had been collected in the last four days. None of the private tips sounded any good, Briers said. One was just a fake, a hanger-on trying to do himself a bit of good with the police. Another was a silly youngster trying to be helpful. Briers had no faith in public-house informers. The only informers who had been much use to him were quiet old things who used the telephone, asked him along to a decent little house in Clapham, and gave him a cup of tea.

Files, some in stiff cardboard covers, lay open on the table in front of Briers. He had not referred to them, and now he slapped one shut.

‘Well, Humphrey, that’s about the state of the game today, 30 July as ever is. I’d still like to have it tied up in a couple of weeks.’

‘Shall you?’

Briers repeated: ‘I wouldn’t bet on it if I were you.’

As Humphrey got ready to go, there was an exchange of invitations. Briers said that he would be in this office each afternoon until further notice. Humphrey was always welcome. On his side, Humphrey said that he lived nearby (Briers: ‘Don’t you think we’ve got you on the record?’) And they could have a drink any evening, if Briers ever finished work.

Then Briers, naturally, casually, said: ‘Oh, one little point. What do you know about Lord Loseby?’

It might be as natural as it sounded, but it wasn’t as casual. On the job – or off it, so far as Humphrey had observed – Briers didn’t leave interesting questions to chance.

This was a man Humphrey had a liking for and something like regard; so he wasn’t, as he had been with Tom Thirkill, prepared to fence at the mention of that name.

‘I’ve seen a certain amount of him since he was a boy. That’s about all.’

‘Have you any idea where he was last Saturday?’

‘He happened to tell me.’ Humphrey smiled across the table, one ex-interrogator to another far from ex. ‘And I happened to send him round here to tell your people.’

‘Oh, yes, we know. You sent him here on Tuesday. We knew.’

‘Did you now?’ Even to Humphrey, who had once had others watched, it seemed improper to be watched himself.

‘I didn’t see him myself. I might have to. Mark you, I don’t take this too seriously. Of course, I’ve read Loseby’s statement. I expect you heard the story.’

‘If it’s the same one he told me–’

‘You know, finding an excuse to get on the loose. Coming over to see Grandma. While he played around on his own. That’s what he said. Is it true?’

‘However should I know? It’s just what he told me.’

‘The lads here have checked what they can. So far it all holds up. But that doesn’t mean much. He had plenty of time to arrange some confirmation.’

‘Who was he with?’

Briers, after the remark that he didn’t take the episode seriously, was apologetic. ‘I’m sorry, Humphrey, but I don’t think I ought to tell you. There are some peculiar circumstances. Including where he was that night, and all that weekend. Or so he says.’

Humphrey said: ‘It sounds pretty plausible.’

‘Yes, it does.’ Then Briers asked brusquely: ‘What’s he really like?’

Humphrey gave another smile of recognition. That was an old technique, the sudden switch, from easy-going to probing.

‘You were talking about professional criminals. You might say that Loseby is a professional charmer.’

‘I don’t care much for that.’

‘You’re not asked to, are you?’

‘Would you trust him?’

‘That’s too simple for you, Frank. You know it is. Trust him, what for? I think I’d trust him alongside me in a war. I don’t think I’d trust him an especially long way with money – that is, I wouldn’t like to lend him much, if I wanted it back. I wouldn’t trust him with a girl I was fond of. I wouldn’t trust him in various other ways.’

Briers’ expression had become not only tough, but open and friendly. ‘Fair enough,’ he said.

‘And you haven’t asked me, have you, whether I believe he could have killed his grandmother?’

‘I might have asked you whether I had to waste time thinking about him.’

‘Come clean,’ said Humphrey. ‘I’ll answer what you haven’t asked, if it’s any use to you. No, I don’t believe he could. He could do a good many things, not that.’ Humphrey seemed to be reflecting. He went on: ‘I take it, it must be rather rare for men to kill their grandmothers?’

Briers laughed out loud. The question sounded curiously academic, and curiously untypical of the other man.

‘I don’t recall running across a case myself. There must be a few. I doubt if there is any family relation where there hasn’t been a murder.’

Humphrey, ceasing to be immersed in any reflections, said: ‘I don’t believe that Loseby could have done it. The trouble is, in this sort of shambles, anything seems possible. And that’s true the more one happens to have seen.’

‘The trouble is, we’ve both seen too much. I agree with you, it’s harder to say, full stop, it’s just not on.’

Briers opened a cupboard, brought out a bottle, and they each had a drink. They didn’t return to the subject. It might have been unexpected, even to themselves, two stable experienced men, confiding how at times, against all sense and reason, it was hard to disbelieve.

On the following Tuesday, Humphrey was again asked to call at the police station. This time it was not Briers’ voice, but a deferential one, punctuated by glottal stops, which spoke on the telephone. ‘Inspector Shingler here. The name won’t mean anything, but I’m one of the chief’s team. I don’t want to trouble you, sir, but there’s a little point you might be able to clear up. It’s nothing to do with your statement, of course, just a little point we have to shift out of the way – someone has been helping us with our enquiries.’

At that phrase, Shingler’s voice had a faint inflection, one knowledgeable man to another. The phrase had already appeared several times in the Press, the smooth talk of official handouts. The papers had nothing to go on, in spite of those references. There were already signs of criticism. One popular Sunday had run a three-inch headline.
What has happened to our police
? The article wasn’t specifically concerned with the Belgravia murder, and might have been written before. Nevertheless, the chance was too good to miss, and there were several hundred indignant words, appealing for the safety of the old and infirm, all the other Lady Ashbrooks of the country.

As for Lady Ashbrook herself, Humphrey had seen only one more personal notice. With nothing to do, he had gone into his club, which didn’t often happen; and, as also didn’t often happen, he had skimmed through the weekend journals. It was curious how habits dropped away. Not so long ago he and his organisation bought such journals as a matter of course, not now.

To his surprise, he found in the
New Statesman
a longish article entitled ‘Establishment Incarnate’. Down the page the name of Madge Ashbrook kept glaring out. Humphrey began to read with twisted amusement, but then his emotions became more mixed. The piece was signed with a woman’s name, and soon he guessed that this was a daughter, or more likely a granddaughter, of an old acquaintance.

To anyone who knew some private language, it was a certainty that the writer was upper-class, detesting her origins, determined to believe what all good progressives believed. In too many ways for Humphrey’s comfort, she might have been his own daughter. The writer commented that she – Madge Ashbrook – was the Establishment at its most typical. She had married into the top of the old aristocracy, so far as there was one. Then, in circumstances carefully concealed by an Establishment cover-up (fair comment, Humphrey thought), she married again into the new political–commercial aristocracy. She had always lived among the rich. She had always known, without thinking, what right-thinking people should and would decide.

That was the strength of the Establishment, they didn’t need to cogitate, they knew by instinct. Madge Ashbrook had known that it was right to appease Hitler, right to get rid of Edward VIII, right to regard Chamberlain as a saviour, and then right to deify Winston Churchill. She had never had an original idea in her life, and yet she and her kind had great influence. She was an entirely ordinary woman. If she had been born in a different environment, it was easy to imagine her as a housewife in Manchester, bringing up her children in a strict old-fashioned way, devoted to a loving, over-possessive family life. (Was this girl, Humphrey thought, working off a grudge of her own?) Nevertheless, privileged as she was, Madge Ashbrook had once been glamorous. Very glamorous, so all the memoirs reported.

She had been one of the beautiful young women who might have known – probably did know – Rupert Brooke, Julian Grenfell, Patrick Shaw-Stewart, Raymond Asquith, in that idyllic time before the 1914–18 war, a war of which Madge, of course, must have unquestioningly approved. She had survived and the young men hadn’t, and she passed on to shine as one of the beautiful young women of the twenties, the last stars of a decaying civilisation. It was a worthless civilisation, but still she and the other beautiful women had shone in it, and seemed to have enjoyed it. Now she and nearly all the rest of them had gone.
Où sont les neiges d’antan
?

Humphrey was, despite himself, a trifle touched. This girl had a romantic heart. But he wished that she had been able to resist that last flourish.

On his second visit to the police station, Humphrey was once more conducted to the Murder Room, but Frank Briers wasn’t there. The invitation hadn’t come from him. More likely, Humphrey thought, it was the young man Shingler making a new acquaintance, conceivably a useful one. He would certainly have known that Humphrey had been talking in private with Briers for hours on the previous Friday. He could have heard murmurs about their earlier connection.

Though Briers was absent, a dozen of his officers had been collected in the Murder Room. There were several Scenes of Crime men, detective sergeants Humphrey hadn’t heard of. He was finding it hard to identify faces and remember names. There were two women, whose rank he didn’t catch, pretty in an active, hearty fashion, rather like less peach-fed versions of the county girls with whom Humphrey had gone hunting in his youth.

The matter which had been Shingler’s reason or pretext for invoking Humphrey turned out to be puzzling but insignificant. The person who had been helping them with their enquiries was a youth who had offered himself. This was the ‘silly young man’ Briers had mentioned. The boy was trying to help, Briers said. ‘The chief’s got that wrong,’ Shingler remarked knowingly, not long after they had told Humphrey the facts. ‘All that guy wants is to feel important. It’s his chance to get into the public eye.’

The youth delivered newspapers round the Square and in the neighbourhood. His story was that, on the Sunday morning after the murder, at the usual time, about eight o’clock, he pushed Lady Ashbrook’s paper – she took only one – through her letter-box. As he did so, he had a vague memory that he heard sounds of a thumping nature from within the house. He thought nothing of it until he learned that the old lady had been killed. He did know that Maria, the daily woman, didn’t work in the house on Sundays. He thought that it was right to pass his information to the police. ‘It might be useful.’

‘So it would be,’ said Shingler, ‘if he ever heard it. Bloody little show-off.’

The boy didn’t know, and hadn’t been told, that the police were certain that Lady Ashbrook had been murdered the night before. The chief of the Scenes of Crime squad, Shingler, was more than usually assertive. They were sure that no one had been in the house that Sunday morning. It was too much to imagine that someone else, taking all precautions known to man, leaving no prints, traces, relics of occupation, had been lurking in the house hours after the murderer had left. Not only lurking, but amusing himself by making violent noises.

‘It’s a bit of tomfoolery. It stands to sense it is.’

‘It might have been a poltergeist,’ Bale said sedately. He had scarcely spoken, but Humphrey had recognised that he was the senior officer there. Humphrey couldn’t decide whether that was a serious suggestion. Policemen could be as addicted to the supernatural as anyone else, he thought.

They were asking Humphrey if he had anything to suggest. Did he know the lad? Humphrey said no, but he would recognise him by sight. He was efficient. Papers came regularly, on time, on the rare occasions when there were no strikes in Fleet Street. Loud police laughter: strikers of any kind, anywhere, were not their favourite characters. Could the lad have mixed up that Sunday with a day when he might have heard some noise, Humphrey enquired. Even the Monday, when at that time in the morning there would have already been several people in the house, Maria, himself, the local sergeant.