A Coat of Varnish (41 page)

‘What are the ordinary human rules?’

‘If you don’t know them, that would be interesting. But, of course, you do. The real point, for a man like you, is what makes people keep them.’

‘I think I know that. Do you? You may as well tell me.’

Briers replied: ‘Some sort of good feeling or good instinct, I should like to say. But I’m not so certain of that as I used to be, when I was a starry-eyed young policeman. I’m afraid the crude answer is sanctions. We’re losing those. We’ve lost religious sanctions, most of us. That really meant fear of judgment and the afterlife, didn’t it? You’re not a believer, are you? Yes, we’ve explored that, too. Not many of us fear judgment now. But there are other kinds of fear. Fear of what other people think. In the long run, though, it’s mostly fear of the law. Without the law, there wouldn’t be much left in the way of moral rules. I wish I believed something else, but nowadays I can’t. The trouble is, Doctor, you’re an astonishingly fearless man.’

‘That’s an unexpected testimonial, isn’t it?’

‘Do you accept it?’

‘I’ve told you before, you have a powerful imagination. Too powerful for your job, I’m inclined to think. But I do accept that it’s fear which makes most people conform. If there weren’t fear, how would everyone behave?’

‘Horribly.’

Then, steadily, Briers corrected himself ‘No, not everyone, of course not. But enough to make the world a shambles.’

‘You’d rather they conformed like good tame beasts?’

‘Of course.’

Perryman broke into a smile, as though they were intimate. ‘I thought we had something in common. But I rather think that I have more hopes for human beings than you have.’

‘Are you in a strong moral position to say that?’

‘You’ve spent quite a long time suggesting that I’m not in any moral position at all.’

‘I shall become more practical very soon.’

Whether he had reached close enough, Briers couldn’t tell, but he couldn’t delay his hidden card much longer.

However, he didn’t back away at once from their code-like exchange.

‘Tell me,’ Briers was saying. ‘Do you put much value on human life? As the rest of us do?’

‘I’m a doctor.’

‘You are also not an ordinary man. We’ve agreed on that, haven’t we? Do you feel above the way ordinary people regard life and death, or do you think that’s a piece of nonsense?’

For a time Perryman’s answer didn’t come so smoothly. Then he said: ‘I’m a doctor. Doctors live very near to death.’

‘Not as near as we do. In the Murder Squad. When you’re on a job, you see live bodies. When we’re on a job, we only see them dead. Like old Lady Ashbrook. That’s why we’re here.’ That was one of Briers’ spasms in which force and authority showed through. Then he relapsed into the manner he had used right through that interrogation. More than casual, not judging, not kind, but understanding.

‘You know as well as we do,’ he said, ‘you saw that dead body before we did. I should like to be certain why you killed her. Did you really want to do something no one else could do? Not many will believe that, you know. Too fancy. But that’s not what I want to clear up. I want to find out – from you – some facts about that night. I ought to tell you, we have worked some of them out for ourselves.’

Perryman’s face turned youthful, as it had just once before. Lines were wiped away, as with sculptured faces at startling news, good or bad. To Perryman, this move of Briers, quiet, so long delayed, seemed to be entirely unexpected. He made a kind of reply, half-inaudible, something like ‘How interesting’, as though he had been hearing some remarks at a party on which he hadn’t thought it necessary to concentrate.

His gaze, not staring into the distance now, became fixed on Briers. He must be collecting himself, the policemen both thought, wondering if this was a bluff or how much they knew.

‘Yes,’ Briers said, like one continuing a conversation, ‘we do know how you spent that night. That had us guessing, I don’t mind telling you. For much too long. There ought to have been sightings all through the early evening, if that was when you called in at the house. There were plenty of people about and you’re a very noticeable figure. Then afterwards, later that night, Susan Thirkill, Loseby’s wife as she now is–’

‘That girl’s a whore.’ That was a flash of protest, of moral indignation, curiously spontaneous.

Briers blinked, twisted his lips, went on: ‘Well, she was prowling in the mews, round the house, on the watch for someone else, for hours.’

‘What did she tell you?’

‘It was very interesting. She knows you very well, of course.’

‘Whatever she told you, she made it up. What did she say?’

‘She didn’t see a glimpse of you. She didn’t see the slightest sign of you anywhere.’

Perryman’s face was impassive, but he inhaled, as though he had been having trouble with his breathing.

‘I must say, Chief Superintendent,’ he said, with his shadow of a smile, ‘this isn’t the most sensational bit of reporting anyone’s ever made.’

‘No, but it did help us to decide where you were that night.’

‘I told you.’

‘Certainly you’ve told us. But the truth is rather different, isn’t it?’

‘I shan’t go on repeating myself.’

‘You needn’t. You were in Lady Ashbrook’s house. You were there from the middle of the afternoon till the small hours. You killed her round about nine, not later than half-past, and then stayed for a longish time afterwards. Several hours. Not many men could have done that. We think, without being quite certain, that you spent nearly all that time, after you had killed her, sitting quietly upstairs in her bedroom.’

‘I was in her bedroom in the morning. Examining her. The usual routine examination.’

‘Yes. You’ve told us. You’d thought of most things. You’re a perfectionist; you always have been, so we’re told. You did know that it’s very difficult to pass any time in a room without leaving some sort of trace behind. Yes, you left a bit of fluff from your tweed suit in the morning – all explicable, all in order with your own account; but you went back to that room again that night, after you had killed her, and presumably settled down. If you left traces then, it didn’t matter. They could be put down to the morning. You settled down nice and peacefully, didn’t you? You must have known that not many men would have been capable of that.’

It was here, for the first time, that Briers was overstating his case. They had no discernible evidence that could have distinguished the morning traces from any in the evening. In fact the bit of tweed fluff was all they had picked up. There had been exhaustive studies by Owen Morgan, but nothing more had come. Briers was letting Perryman think that they had another find.

Perryman didn’t protest or deny. He didn’t speak at all. In the past few minutes, he had been sitting slackly, half-slumped. He was looking, not at Briers but at the table, and anyone entering the room, not aware of what had been happening, might have thought that he appeared, not distressed, but something like amused and confidential. That was the moment, Briers said later, when he was sure that Perryman had resigned. Perhaps with the kind of surrender that Briers had seen often enough in other suspects, but this time there was another aura, too, as though the man hadn’t been beaten down, but persuaded, even wooed, arrogance untouched, perhaps enhanced.

Shingler afterwards gave a different account from Briers’. He hadn’t Briers’ candour. He said that, on the spot, he didn’t believe that this was the breaking-point. He did admit that he had been certain that something decisive would happen soon.

Briers went on: ‘There’s just one other matter. I’ve not been able to make up my mind. Perhaps you can’t, either. After you had killed her, and that wasn’t much trouble, naturally, then you went upstairs for a good long stay. Very bright. You must have worked out that we should wear ourselves into the ground, trying to pick up sightings, just after the murder. You were quite right. That is exactly what we did. We must have located every human being who was in the locality between 9 p.m. and midnight. Meanwhile, you were sitting in her bedroom. But before you went up there, after she was quite dead, you smashed her skull in. I’ve asked you before. Why?’

Perryman’s body was still slack, mouth still half-smiling.

‘I suppose,’ said Briers, ‘you might have thought it would lead us up the garden path. Looking for villains or any sort of scum. I told you in that case you underestimated us. We had to go through the motions, because anything can happen in this business, but it didn’t take us in for half an hour. But I’ve never been convinced that was really why you had to belt in her head. I think you lost your own. I think you were just the same as all those others. You’re not as unique as you’d like to be. You might have reckoned on that, Doctor. Of course, you recovered yourself very quickly. Then you left the body and you went upstairs.’ Briers went on. ‘You’d been very lucky. I expect you know that. Blood. Whether you had made preparations – we haven’t found anything on your clothes yet. We don’t know whether you changed or where. We don’t know exactly how long you stayed upstairs. Our guess is that you left when it was still dark, but not long before dawn. Perhaps about four o’clock at that time of year. It must have been a nice fresh morning.’

Briers looked across the table, and said: ‘You’re ready to talk to me, aren’t you?’

There was a time of silence. How long it lasted none of them could have told. Perryman was stirring, straightening his back, sitting upright in his chair, neck like a pillar. Very slowly he once again folded his arms over his chest.

‘Oh yes, Chief Superintendent, I’m ready to talk to you.’

Shingler smoothed out his notebook, though this couldn’t be a formal statement.

‘Yes,’ Perryman was speaking with a curious expansiveness, ‘I fancy this will be the last time I’m ready to speak to you in these particular circumstances. We’ve come to the end of the road, haven’t we? You can’t accuse me of not letting you take your time. I’ve listened carefully to your various profiles of my character. Interesting, sometimes quite flattering, if one accepted your view of my moral position. I have also followed your reconstructions of certain actions of mine. I’m going to take a leaf out of your book, Chief Superintendent, and tell you that you are an unusual man. But we have to settle our bit of business, don’t we? And I’m bound to tell you that I’m getting distinctly tired of it. It’s high time we wound it up. In my profession I sometimes tell an intelligent patient that I’ll treat him like a specimen on the table being examined by the two of us. I’ve been doing a certain amount of thinking about this case of yours, if you can call it a case. I am completely disregarding whether there is any justification for any of your reconstructions. For any serious purposes of yours, they really aren’t any more relevant than your thoughts about good and evil. I can’t take these thoughts of yours all that seriously. And I can’t take your case seriously. According to my calculations, if we put the case on the table, and look at it like that, there’s really singularly little left.’

Briers had realised almost before Perryman began to talk, that this was going to be an exhibition of control. Even so, he was astonished. Perryman had been shaken at the early interrogation, more than shaken, assaulted, by questions about his money motive. That had made him look as if he were crumbling. But he had come up that morning, front as impenetrable as ever. He had a kind of inner resource, Briers now accepted it, which not only gave him assurance against enemies, but to himself. When Briers had told Perryman where he had been on the murder night, once more he had been seen to be giving up – not so outraged as about the money, but with less fight. And yet within the hour he had recovered himself again.

‘There’s no need for excessive palaver, you’ll agree, as a reasonable person,’ Perryman said, immobile, lofty, and in a tone both resentful and contemptuous. ‘Just consider your case like a body on the table. You should forget about me and your efforts at psychological creation. You have to keep things straightforward. I’m surprised that I have to tell you that. Just look at your case with clear eyes – you haven’t much there. Yes, I was connected with Lady Ashbrook, that’s been open since the beginning. Yes, I did some business for her. Yes, some of the business evaded some minor tax regulations. What does that signify? Yes, I was something like an executor after her death. Yes, I was in a position to make a little money. As this young man of yours took it on himself to point out, a very little money. And that’s all you have in straightforward fact.’

Shingler had flushed at the sneer in his direction, uttered as though he weren’t present, or were a waiter at a dinner-party.

‘The Chief Superintendent has told you, we know about your movements that night–’

‘Yes, he’s told me. He has a powerful imagination. He’s also interested in facts. I congratulate him on both qualities. It happens that I’m interested in facts myself. I’ve been thinking quite carefully about his history of my movements that night. It was an impressive exercise.’

‘Well, then?’ Shingler was both mystified and angry.

Briers sat still, face set, eyes luminous.

‘Impressive but useless.’ Perryman loosened an arm and made a gesture, sweeping, wide and grand. ‘It might have taken in some innocent creatures. In fact, you have nothing. Nothing solid. You know it. I know it. So that there is no point in going on with this dialogue, Chief Superintendent. If you’ll forgive me, I had better begin to get back to my patients.’

Laboriously he was getting to his feet, clutching the edge of the table as he stood up.

‘Oh, two minor things,’ he said. ‘I consider that I’ve helped you as much as I reasonably can. As I said this morning, I don’t feel like affording any more time for this kind of performance. If you are calling on me again, I shall need to bring in professional advice. I haven’t the time or the leisure. I’m sure you understand.’

Briers gave no indication.

‘Oh, the second thing, Chief Superintendent. I’m suffering from a touch of fibrositis. It makes walking distinctly painful. Have you ever had it? I’d be obliged if you could lay on transport.’