A Coat of Varnish (30 page)

He also seemed to have developed an obsession for spying on Gimson. Most evenings before the theatre, he took to watching the entrance to the apartment. It wasn’t just a coincidence that, on that Saturday in July, he was there as usual. Once that was established, the lads really got to work, said Briers. He was a hysteric, they didn’t like him. They put the pressure on. Senior officers joined in; once Frank himself. ‘But I wasn’t needed. The team was on the job.’ Fairly soon they extracted one fact. Darblay had seen Loseby (whom he had met during his peaceful period with Douglas Gimson) enter the apartment that evening. The time he gave was about 5 p.m. Near enough to what Loseby and Gimson had themselves told the police. Darblay had hung about until getting on for theatre-time. Loseby hadn’t left by then.

So far this statement was in line with the Loseby story, that he had been with Gimson all evening, all night, until the following morning. Though it wasn’t relevant, he and Gimson both claimed that he had been there the whole of the Sunday.

It might have been a fluke, Frank remarked, but one of the lads asked Darblay what he had done during the rest of that night. Darblay said that they couldn’t be interested in anything else he had done. They became pressingly interested. What had he been doing that night? He blustered and began to shriek. ‘What do you think a bleeding stagehand does? Would any of you fancy the bleeding job?’ What else have you done? What else? They went on.

Both Frank and Humphrey knew the technique of this kind of questioning off by heart. One officer kept saying: ‘Phone calls. How many did you make?’ Darblay became enraged. How many? How many calls about Captain Gimson? It took an hour or two before Darblay admitted that he had phoned Gimson’s flat five times from the theatre during the performance. He hadn’t liked the look of that Lord Loseby going there. He had asked whether Captain Gimson was in. What words had he used? ‘What the hell does it matter? They knew who I was,’ Darblay screamed. ‘Yes, yes, yes.’

Who had answered? ‘Yes, yes.’ Sometimes one, sometimes the other. It must have made a row, so the policemen said; there are telephones on both sides of that bed.

After the theatre? Had he rung again? Yes, yes, yes. More than once? Yes, yes, yes. Until what time? He couldn’t remember. Midnight? He expected so. After midnight? Yes, yes, yes. Until they took the receiver off.

‘If it had been me,’ Humphrey said, ‘I can’t help feeling that I would have done that quite a long time before. It must have got in the way of an evening’s gentle entertainment.’ Briers said that he had asked them why they hadn’t. Apparently, Gimson was waiting for a call from his mother.

‘I must say, it’s an odd way for anyone to get out of trouble.’ Humphrey went on: ‘But it does seem pretty convincing, doesn’t it?’

‘It does. It stands up all the way round. By the by, I asked them why they hadn’t told me; it might have saved us plenty of man hours. They said they had mentioned phone calls. But they certainly hadn’t mentioned the subject. That would have got us going.’

‘Why ever didn’t they?’

‘You tell me. You know these people.’

Humphrey reflected later, it might be that Loseby wasn’t ashamed of much under heaven, but perhaps he was ashamed of looking ridiculous. Neither he nor Gimson could have guessed at Darblay’s timetable, or thought that it was any use to them. What was certain, they would have had to try hard to appear more ridiculous.

‘I hope you told them that they had been insufferable fools. Trying to suppress things.’

‘I did.’ Briers gave his toughest smile. ‘I also told him, Douglas Gimson, that if he’s obliged to pick up young men he’d do better to stick to his own class. He wouldn’t be so likely to get into this kind of mess.’

Then Frank Briers turned irritable again.

‘That’s something we’ve tidied up anyhow. But there’s one spot where we haven’t been so clever. I blame myself, Humphrey, I blame myself.’

This had been on his mind all morning, Humphrey thought. Briers enjoyed success, but failure touched him more – which might make for efficacy, but not for animal comfort.

‘It’s the girl Susan. We may have missed a trick.’

Then Briers went into an angry description, angry but still lucid. Susan had come off her bogus story, she had no option, Briers told Humphrey. Now she said that she must have been thinking of some other night. Briers broke off, temper no better, into words about Susan’s behaviour. Now she had Loseby safely in her clutches, he said, she didn’t give a tinker’s curse for his night out with Douglas Gimson. She took homos and their doings like a cup of tea.

Then Briers got back to business. He thought they knew, he said, when Susan met Loseby after that weekend, and she agreed to cover him with the bogus story. It was some time on the Monday afternoon. That story carried her, too. Now it was all blown. It doesn’t enter. Briers went on, voice sharpened: ‘What does enter is where the young lady really was on the Saturday evening. The worry is we could have missed something. It’s a great mistake to sit back and think you’ve got all you want. It’s one of the oldest mistakes in the book. We went on plugging about Loseby, but somehow we swallowed the girl’s story. We took it for granted she’d been with him part of that night, anyway. It’s my own fault and no one else’s.’

‘What about her, then?’

‘The trouble is it doesn’t make such sense, either. We may have missed a sighting. Or else it seemed so far-fetched we didn’t follow it up.’ Frank Briers was talking roughly, as though, in spite of his protestations of self-blame, it was really Humphrey, totally innocent, who deserved to take it.

‘Come on.’ Humphrey had had long experience of bosses when they had slipped.

‘There may have been a sighting. It didn’t seem likely enough to take seriously. Those mews flats at the bottom of the old lady’s garden – someone told us there had been a girl hanging about when they went out to dinner. About eight on the Saturday night. They came back later, couldn’t be sure of the time, somewhere between half-past ten and eleven. The girl, they thought it was the same girl, was still walking about between the mews and the street. They didn’t pay much attention to her. Medium height, smartish clothes, slacks – might have fitted anyone. They didn’t know Susan from Adam – why in God’s name does no one know anyone else in London? Photographs – yes, it could have been her, but it could have been hundreds of other girls. The lads asked her about it, as a matter of course. But she laughed it off. That was the time she was sticking to her old story with Loseby left out. She couldn’t be in bed in a flat she and Loseby sometimes borrowed – which happens to be true, she always gets her back-up stories right – she couldn’t be in bed and walking about the mews at the same time, could she? So it didn’t seem worth going on. And it’s getting too late now. If they didn’t see much then, they’re not going to after a couple of months.’

‘It’s not very plausible, is it?’

‘You’re telling me.’

‘If she were there, waiting about for hours, she couldn’t have been in the house–’

‘We managed to work that out for ourselves.’

Humphrey received that snub with a faint smile.

‘So in a direct sense she would be more or less let out. No one would do a murder, and dawdle about for ever. Unless they were quite mad.’

‘She’s as sane as you are. We managed to work that out, too.’

‘It doesn’t seem plausible. Surely it’s long odds it was a girl waiting for a man to come back to one of those flats.’

‘That’s what we thought.’

‘If by any miracle it was Susan,’ Humphrey was brooding, ‘I suppose she might have known who was in the house – or who she imagined might be.’

‘Teach your grandmother to suck eggs.’

That was said with something like a return to good nature.

After a while, Frank said: ‘Do you believe she was there?’

Humphrey said: ‘If she was there, she ought to have seen someone or something.’

It was Frank, quicker than Humphrey, who had seen another possibility, which was still obscure that morning. Frank went on: ‘If she did see someone, we can make up for lost time. God knows we’ve lost enough time. We’ll have to get to work on her, of course.’

‘Will she talk?’

‘She’ll talk all right. Whether she’ll talk anything like the truth, that’s quite another matter.’

A couple of days after the visit to the mortuary, still in that dank October, Humphrey heard quick steps on his stairs. They were steps he knew by heart. Kate hadn’t given any warning that she was coming. It was early evening, she must have just returned from work. When she came into the room, she kissed him and said, fast, as though she had been rehearsing the speech and didn’t want to be interrupted: ‘I still can’t give you everything you want. I don’t want to come under false pretences. But it’s a mistake to wait for ever. Let’s get what we can.’

She wasn’t pretending, excusing herself, finessing with a false story. Humphrey was startled. His composure left him. Neither of them spoke. Then they went, arms round each other, into his bedroom. Clothes came off. It was all as though they had been married for a long time. The flesh was kind.

Then as she lay in his arms, face lines smoothed away, she muttered: ‘Good. Any time. Any time you want.’

Rain was slashing against the window. The night was closing in. It was a night to be safe in bed. She gave a comfortable sigh. A little later, she kissed his cheek, and turned on him her disrespectful grin. She said: ‘I always wondered when you’d get on with it.’

He freed an arm, and slapped her. The flesh was as disrespectful as she was. The flesh was kind.

Comfortable minutes in the half-dark, rain chuntering on the glass. Bed chatter. She said: ‘I want to talk to you soon.’

He stirred, but she said: ‘No, we had better get dressed. I don’t want us to be distracted. Perhaps we ought to have a drink.’

There wasn’t much said until they were back in the sitting-room, Kate in her neat office dress, Humphrey in his workaday suit, both with whiskys in their hands. They were not sitting together on the sofa, but, as if it were by understanding, opposite each other in the big armchairs.

‘I am trying to be honest,’ she said. ‘It’s not as easy as it ought to be.’

‘I trust you, you know,’ he replied.

‘I know you do. And I trust you. Absolutely. But still it isn’t easy.’ She burst out: ‘I want you altogether. We’re right for each other, aren’t we?’ That was said with an edge of diffidence, and she had to hear him say: ‘I knew that a long time ago.’

‘I think I did, too. But I thought I might be fooling myself. You see, I’m not much of a prospect, am I?’

‘Don’t be so modest–’

‘I’m not. I haven’t exactly been competed for by men.’

‘More fools they.’ Humphrey understood her diffidence, and thought he mustn’t pamper it.

‘Bless you.’ Her expression was unusually soft. ‘Anyway, I know we fit each other. It’s a bit of a marvel, but I can’t help accepting it. Some of the time. So it would be wonderful beyond anything I’ve dreamed of to give you all you want. I’m trying to tell you I can’t, not yet awhile; you have to be patient. I love you very much, but I’m not quite free.’

Humphrey said, with a kind of stiff gentleness: ‘Do you still love him?’

‘No. Not as I love you. But when you’ve lived with someone for fifteen years there are ties you can’t snap all at one go. Somehow I’m still obliged to care for him. My love, you’re a self-sufficient man. Somehow you’ve always been able to look after yourself, haven’t you?’ Very close, discomfortingly close, to what Luria had said that night in the pub, Humphrey thought. She was repeating herself: ‘You’re not helpless. It makes life distinctly less exacting.’

She met his smile, but her own was mechanical.

‘No, he really is helpless,’ she said.

‘You realise, that could go on for ever.’

‘No,’ she said in a resonant voice, ‘that’s not on. Somehow I’ll find a way. I can’t endure it for much longer. I can’t endure it if you want me just for yourself.’

‘I’ve made that clear enough,’ said Humphrey. ‘But, you know it as well as I do, you’re not so clear. You can’t tell me when you’re hoping to be free. Even tonight you can’t. Can you?’

‘You’ll have to bear with me a bit longer. I promise you, I love you and I’ll do it.’

Watching her, Humphrey believed her. Even more, he wished to believe her. This was one of the reassurances of love, more unqualified than any future could be.

‘For the time being,’ she began, sounding firmer than she was.

‘For the time being what?’

‘For the time being you’ll have to be satisfied with what we have.’

He gazed at her without responding.

‘You’re good at making the most of things,’ she said, as though it were an appeal. ‘You do know, don’t you, you have plenty of capacity for happiness?’

‘If so’ – this time Humphrey did respond, with a familiar smile – ‘I must say, I’ve managed to conceal it very well.’

He added: ‘My girl, I should say that it was you who had the capacity for happiness. I’ve never known anyone with more. That’s one of the things I liked at the beginning.’

‘Let’s hope,’ she said, decision, boldness, realism all returning, ‘it’ll turn out useful for us both.’ She added: ‘While I can’t do everything–’

‘“While” is a long word,’ he said.

‘We can have plenty to hold on to. I can get away quite a bit. Like this. More than this.’

‘Does he know anything about it?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

‘Is that true?’

‘I wouldn’t lie to you. I haven’t the faintest idea. He’d never ask me. I can see you very often.’

‘Better than nothing.’ Said with sarcastic affection.

‘Yes, yes. Bed, any time. I told you.’ She gave her monkey-like grin. ‘Good for us both.’

‘Good for us both.’

‘Don’t think that I don’t know that I’m not giving you all you want. You’ve never had too much of what you want, have you? For God’s sake I can’t understand why not. If anyone was made to have a decent life, you were.’

‘It wasn’t God’s fault,’ Humphrey said. ‘It must have been my own. Something wrong with my character, or nature. Or whatever you like.’