A Coat of Varnish (39 page)

Briers answered affectionately, obstinately: ‘You’ve seen a lot of other things as well as crime. You don’t think any of us are much good, do you? So you like to see everything bleak and simple, don’t you? That’s because you don’t think much of yourself.’

Within a few hours of that conversation, information arrived from the Scotland Yard team in New York. Their American colleagues had done some gentle talking with the O’Brien firm. Their old partner’s wishes had to be respected, but in the circumstances they felt justified in giving them confidential information. They had made an estimate of the amount in the Comptroller Fund. It was disconcertingly small. So small that the detectives studying the brief had to ask the lawyers to search the documents again. They found no more traces. There was less than £15,000 to be paid out. Briers told Humphrey this, without comment but not without satisfaction. If Perryman had killed for money, it would have been for a few thousand pounds. He left it for Humphrey to think about.

Humphrey didn’t comment, either. Instead, there was a task which he didn’t look forward to but couldn’t shirk. Just as he had felt cowardly on that visit to Lady Ashbrook back in the summer, when she didn’t know the result of the hospital examination, so he felt cowardly driving to the Briers’ house. He might have hardened himself with age, but he wasn’t hard enough for the sight of this young woman. He had to force himself to call on her that afternoon. Frank would be at work in the Murder Room. Humphrey had to face the sick girl alone. He was fond of her. She was good. He could still hear Frank’s bitter outburst.

After he had parked the car, he glanced at the houses opposite, secure behind their gardens, standard roses still, in November, blooming on the lawns. It was a fine afternoon, and the low sun made brilliant shields of the downstairs windows. It all looked so tranquil, so trouble-free. He walked up the strip of gravel to the Brierses’ door, as reluctantly as he had walked to Lady Ashbrook’s in July.

He pushed the bell gently. Then he had to push again. There was a drawn-out pause. Then, from inside – something moving along the passage, the tessellated floor, a curious scraping noise.

The door opened. Betty was propped up inside a walking-frame. She smiled, a beautiful welcoming smile.

‘Oh, Humphrey, what a nice surprise.’ She smiled again. ‘You go on. Down to the back room. I’m not all that quick.’

She got herself to the back room, and managed to settle in a chair. ‘I live here most of the time,’ she said. ‘It used to be Frank’s den. I had to turn him out. I don’t have to move about so much. Ridiculous, walking like an infant.’

She had the high spirits Humphrey had witnessed before and couldn’t take. Her face looked little changed, perhaps a shade thinner. Eyes sunken, and perhaps a shade over-bright. She wanted to make him tea; that was easy, the kitchen was just the other side of the passage. Humphrey wouldn’t let her. He wasn’t fond of tea, he said. For an instant, he held her hand. It felt hot, not quite steady.

‘Oh, it’s good to see you,’ she said.

‘Frank hinted that you might like a visitor or two.’

She gave another of her brilliant smiles, but this time open, impatient, candid. ‘No, no.’ Her voice was quite unaffected, full and clear. ‘I want to talk to you. Can I talk?’

‘Anything you like.’

‘It’s what I’ve done to poor old Frank. I’m afraid for him.’

‘Yes, you’re bound to be.’ Humphrey had to meet her with the same openness. She wasn’t the woman to deny the moment in which she stood. Nor should he.

‘No, no. I didn’t mean anything that doesn’t need saying. Of course I’m a drag on him. And I shall be for a long time. Did you realise that this isn’t a killing disease? They tell me not, positively. I’m pretty likely to live as long as he does. All right for me. You’d be surprised how much I get out of life on these terms. Difficult for him. He’s very good. But that’s not the point. I meant something quite different.’

Humphrey, having once misinterpreted, waited for her. She said, eyes brilliant, concentrated, hectic: ‘Do you remember the last time you were here?’

‘Very well.’

‘Do you remember certain things I said?’

‘What things?’

‘No, you have to remember. I said that I wished he could do something positive. You, too. He must have felt that I wasn’t happy with how he was spending his life.’

Humphrey had scarcely noticed those remarks. He had to pretend to bring them back to mind.

‘I suppose you did suggest something like that,’ he said. ‘But no one cared.’

‘I cared.’ Her cheeks, skin still fresh and delicate, had flushed. ‘But I never ought to have said it; it may have done him harm.’

‘Oh, come on.’ He was speaking sincerely, because she was so intense. ‘We all know most decent men would like to help make the world just a trifle better. But there aren’t many jobs which can possibly tell them they’re doing so. What Frank is doing may help the world from getting rather worse. That’s enough justification for most decent men.’

‘It’s negative.’

‘How many people do you think have ever found a genuine moral solvent? Among those I’ve known I could number them on the fingers of one hand.’

‘I’m not arguing with you. That isn’t the point. Once again that isn’t the point. I’m afraid that I may have done him harm. It doesn’t matter whether I was right; I oughtn’t to have said it. I wish you could remember; I was sure you would. I’ve been wishing ever since that I could take it all back.’

She couldn’t take it back, but she could live it again with total recall. Tears were dripping down her cheeks, not wiped away, ignored as though they were as commonplace as her loving smile.

Perhaps this frenetic concentration on words dropped months ago, by others unnoticed or forgotten, might like the tears themselves be a sign of her condition. But also she was so sensitive to any inflection between her and anyone she loved, or even anyone she was fond of, that she had made Humphrey feel that he had three skins too many – while she had three too few.

‘Betty, dear,’ he said, ‘what are you really afraid of? For him?’

‘Oh, it’s very simple, don’t you see? His work is what he’s got left. Except for looking after me. I’m afraid that when he thinks I’m not happy about his work he’ll get unhappy about it, too. We’ve been very near together always. It’s that sort of love. And it sounds horrible, but he respects me. That’s the trouble. I’m afraid I may have weakened his will. He wants all his will for work like his, doesn’t he? I should be very guilty if I weakened it.’

Benevolent she was, Humphrey thought, as he watched the fine-drawn face, kind, high-minded, unself-pitying, tender with loving-kindness; but she, too, had her share of vanity. Moral vanity in her case. Frank might feel that she was a better person than he was. But Humphrey didn’t think that he was so open to influence, as she imagined, even hers. In her state, though, he couldn’t tell her so.

‘I rather fancy,’ he said, unusually circuitous, ‘that you’re worrying too much. I’m almost certain you are. You see, I’m not sure he caught the full meaning of what you said that night, any more than I did. I’ve not seen any sign that he heard anything that upset him. He hasn’t made any reference to me, not the slightest.’

‘I hope you’re right. You don’t sound convinced.’

Humphrey weaved on. ‘My own fear about Frank would be rather different. Because of what’s happened to you, he hasn’t anything else to lose himself in. That’s what you just said. He’s absolutely immersed in his present case. He may get even more involved in his job than he is now. That’s good as far as it goes. At present he’s probably the best professional at his game in the country. He’ll get all the success he wants. But he may have to pay a bit of a price. Part of his skill depends on the fact that he’s not as brutalised as most of us become. He’s kept his imagination. Perhaps you’ll find he gets more brutalised. Not with you. But because of you. That would be a pity. You’ll have to watch him and help him. You’re the only one who can.’

She was crying again, but comfortably. ‘I know,’ she said.

‘Most things have gone right for him, up to now, haven’t they?’ Humphrey needed to keep her comfortable. ‘This is the first real suffering he’s ever had. With characters like his, suffering can make one stronger. But one loses a good deal. I had a certain amount once or twice. I don’t think I was an especially nice young man, but I do know that I emerged a great deal less nice than I had been. But considerably tougher. That might happen to Frank. Be careful with him.’

‘I’d like to talk to your friend Kate,’ Betty said. She wasn’t able to make new acquaintances, and had never seen Kate, but her interest in those she heard about seemed to have become more intense. ‘I’d like to ask her if you’ve lost all your illusions as much as you pretend.’ She looked at Humphrey, eyes brilliant. ‘There’s something else I should like to ask her. She knows about – married love, doesn’t she?’

‘A certain amount, you might say.’

‘Well. Until I get the next remission – of course, we don’t know when, we hope it won’t be long – I’m likely to have no feeling below the waist. That happened the last time. It’s very hard on Frank.’ She was fumbling for words; Humphrey was thinking that Kate wouldn’t have been. ‘He’s not the sort of man who likes having – relations, with a woman who can’t respond. I don’t mind. But he hates it. He stays away. What would Kate do – if you two were in our position?’

‘She couldn’t do much, could she?’

‘She lives in the world, doesn’t she? Would she tell you to console yourself somewhere?’

‘Possibly she might,’ Humphrey said. ‘She’s not a saint. She wouldn’t like it much.’

‘But she would do that?’

‘I think it’s more likely that she’d leave it to me to look after myself. And not tell her anything about it. She’s not a bit naïve, and she’s pretty wise. She’s seen more damage done by enthusiastic candour than by keeping quiet. There are times when it’s best to keep quiet.’

‘You think that’s what Frank ought to do?’

Humphrey said: ‘No one who isn’t inside the situation can say that.’

‘I’m not sure he could.’

When Humphrey told her that he must go, she said, with a smile naked, tender, without a skin of politeness or pretence: ‘It hasn’t been restful for either of us, has it? But you’ve been a help. I don’t think you know.’

Humphrey felt relief to be out in the street, in the calming autumn air. Relieved as he had once been leaving Lady Ashbrook’s. But his spirits hadn’t sunk so low by the sight of this young woman as they had beside the other. Maybe because this one was lovable, and made lovableness seem natural; or maybe it was just that, afflicted as she was, the shadow of death wasn’t so near.

In the murder room, those last days of November, the detectives talked. It was known that, within days, Briers was going to have the doctor brought in for another session. There was excitement in the air which some tried to damp down. In climatic terms the air was damp enough, for the street outside the station was glumly dark, the cloud-cover hung below the jets’ flight-paths, rain didn’t fall much but didn’t cease to look like falling. Round the corner in Elizabeth Street, umbrellas streamed by in the mournful drizzle. The shops, game, fish, groceries, wine, were already brilliant for Christmas. On the way to the pub across the street, the policemen could catch the smell of cheese and fruit, as though they were back in a market-town.

Briers spent his time listening to anyone who wished to talk. Now they were near the end, he aroused a kind of faith. The squad believed that he would find a way through. When they noticed that Morgan, the pathologist, spent a long time with him, the faith got stronger. Some of them knew that Morgan was one of the best of foul-weather allies; but they didn’t know that he had been forced to tell Briers that there was no more to expect, that is, from forensic evidence, within foreseeable time. He had said that Perryman as a student had a reputation for consummate perfectionism. To which Briers had replied, ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

Members of the squad came and left, as Briers sat there for long hours. He asked for others – though the three who had been sitting in at the questioning, Bale, Flamson, Shingler, were usually present. Briers was making up his mind about the final attack. ‘I don’t like set plans,’ he announced more than once. ‘In anything like this, we have to play it by ear. Set plans are always wrong.’ But he didn’t mean quite what he said. He had plans, contingency plans, some not yet put into words. He listened just as he had listened to Humphrey and Morgan. He told his colleagues what he was thinking. He was open, and at times secretive. Even with Bale, whom he could confide in, who was short on ideas, long on action, he didn’t tell all.

It wasn’t much like a streamlined operation, such as when a top civil servant had collected his officials about how to prevail over another department. It was much more like a producer in the entertainment industry, creative, used to an existence where nothing was certain and words meant nothing, or alternatively everything, casting round for openings before going to meet a backer, powerful, obdurate, and whom he didn’t trust.

It was Bale who on the morning of 2 December was deputed to ask Dr Perryman to come along again to the police station. The invitation was considerate. Bale delivered the message – they all knew it would be inconvenient for him to leave his practice. It might have seemed considerate also that the invitation was conveyed by this senior and grave-looking superintendent.

When, having brought the doctor, Bale arrived back at the station, he reported that there had been a show of temperament. On the previous occasion, Perryman, asking police officers into his own drawing-room, had been lofty, indulgent, patronising.

Now he had broken out in protest, asking who compensated a citizen for his time and expenses. Yet, after telephoning another doctor (only that one call, none to a solicitor, Bale noted), Perryman came along. On the way, he hadn’t spoken much, just a sarcastic grumble about the weather. It was a foul morning, the lights of shops and upstairs windows beaming through the murk.