An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (13 page)

“That wedding cake is John’s—we’re just passing under Clare Bridge, one of the prettiest, I think. Thomas Grumbald built it in 1639. They say he was only paid three shillings for the design. You know that view, of course; it’s a good view of Queen’s, though.”

Cordelia’s courage failed her at the thought of interrupting this desultory tourist’s chat with the brutal demand: “Did you and your brother kill your lover?”

Here, rocking gently on the sunlit river, the question seemed both indecent and absurd. She was in danger of being lulled into a gentle acceptance of defeat; viewing all her suspicions as a neurotic hankering after drama and notoriety, a need to justify her fee to Sir Ronald. She believed that Mark Callender had been murdered because she wanted to believe it. She had identified with him, with his solitariness, his self-sufficiency, his alienation from his father, his lonely childhood. She had even—most dangerous presumption of all—come to see herself as his avenger. When Sophie took over the pole, just past the Garden House Hotel, and Davie edged his way along the gently rocking punt and stretched himself out beside her, she knew that she wouldn’t be able to mention Mark’s name. It was out of no more than a vague, unintrusive curiosity that she found herself asking: “Is Sir Ronald Callender a good scientist?”

Davie took up a short paddle and began lazily to stir the shining water. “His science is perfectly respectable, as my dear colleagues would say. Rather more than respectable, in fact. At present the lab is working on ways of expanding the use of biological monitors to assess pollution of the sea and estuaries; that means routine surveys of plants and animals which might serve as indicators. And they did some very useful preliminary work last year on the degradation of plastics. R.C. isn’t so hot himself, but then you can’t expect much original science from the over fifties. But he’s a great spotter of talent and he certainly knows how to run a team if you fancy that dedicated, one for all, band of brothers approach. I don’t. They even publish their papers as the Callender Research Laboratory, not under individual names. That wouldn’t do for me. When I publish, it’s strictly for the glory of David Forbes Stevens and, incidentally, for the gratification of Sophie. The Tillings like success.”

“Was that why you didn’t want to stay on when he offered you a job?”

“That among other reasons. He pays too generously and he asks too much. I don’t like being bought and I’ve a strong objection to dressing up every night in a dinner jacket like a performing monkey in a zoo. I’m a molecular biologist. I’m not looking for the Holy Grail. Dad and Mum brought me up as a Methodist and I don’t see why I should chuck a perfectly good religion which served me very well for twelve years just to put the great scientific principle of Ronald Callender in its place. I distrust these sacerdotal scientists. It’s a bloody wonder that little lot at Garforth House aren’t genuflecting three times a day in the direction of the Cavendish.”

“And what about Lunn? How does he fit in?”

“Oh, that boy’s a bloody wonder! Ronald Callender found him in a children’s home when he was fifteen—don’t ask me how—and trained him to be a lab assistant. You couldn’t find a better. There isn’t an instrument made which Chris Lunn can’t learn to understand and care for. He’s developed one or two himself and Callender has had them patented. If anyone in that lab is indispensable it’s probably Lunn. Certainly Ronald Callender cares a damn sight more for him than he did for his son. And Lunn, as you might guess, regards R.C. as God Almighty, which is very gratifying for them both. It’s extraordinary really, all that violence which used to be expressed in street fights and coshing old ladies, harnessed to the service of science. You’ve got to hand it to Callender. He certainly knows how to pick his slaves.”

“And is Miss Leaming a slave?”

“Well, I wouldn’t know just what Eliza Leaming is. She’s responsible for the business management and, like Lunn, she’s probably indispensable. Lunn and she seem to have a
love-hate relationship, or, perhaps, a hate-hate relationship. I’m not very clever at detecting these psychological nuances.”

“But how on earth does Sir Ronald pay for it all?”

“Well that’s the thousand-dollar question, isn’t it? It’s rumoured that most of the money came from his wife and that he and Elizabeth Leaming between them invested it rather cleverly. They certainly needed to. And then he gets a certain amount from contract work. Even so, it’s an expensive hobby. While I was there they were saying that the Wolvington Trust were getting interested. If they come up with something big—and I gather it’s below their dignity to come up with something small—then most of Ronald Callender’s troubles should be over. Mark’s death must have hit him. Mark was due to come into a pretty substantial fortune in four years’ time and he told Sophie that he intended to hand most of it over to Dad.”

“Why on earth should he do that?”

“God knows. Conscience money, perhaps. Anyway, he obviously thought it was something that Sophie ought to know.”

Conscience money for what, Cordelia wondered sleepily. For not loving his father enough? For rejecting his enthusiasms? For being less than the son he had hoped for? And what would happen to Mark’s fortune now? Who stood to gain by Mark’s death? She supposed that she ought to consult his grandfather’s will and find out. But that would mean a trip to London. Was it really worth it?

She stretched back her face to the sun and trailed one hand in the river. A splash of water from the punt pole stung her eyes. She opened them and saw that the punt was gliding close to the bank and under the shade of overhanging trees. Immediately in front of her a torn branch, cleft at the end and thick as a man’s body, hung by a thread of bark and turned gently as the punt passed beneath it. She was aware of Davie’s
voice; he must have been talking for a long time. How odd that she couldn’t remember what he’d been saying!

“You don’t need reasons for killing yourself; you need reasons for not killing yourself. It was suicide, Cordelia. I should let it go at that.”

Cordelia thought that she must have briefly slept, since he seemed to be answering a question she couldn’t remember having asked. But now there were other voices, louder and more insistent. Sir Ronald Callender’s: “My son is dead.
My
son. If I am in some way responsible, I’d prefer to know. If anyone else is responsible, I want to know that too.” Sergeant Maskell’s: “How would you use this to hang yourself, Miss Gray?” The feel of the belt, smooth and sinuous, slipping like a live thing through her fingers.

She sat bolt upright, hands clasped around her knees, with such suddenness that the punt rocked violently and Sophie had to clutch at an overhanging branch to keep her balance. Her dark face, intriguingly fore-shortened and patterned with the shadow of leaves, looked down at Cordelia from what seemed an immense height. Their eyes met. In that moment Cordelia knew how close she had come to giving up the case. She had been suborned by the beauty of the day, by sunshine, indolence, the promise of comradeship, even friendship, into forgetting why she was here. The realization horrified her. Davie had said that Sir Ronald was a good picker. Well, he had picked her. This was her first case and nothing and no one was going to hinder her from solving it.

She said formally: “It was good of you to let me join you, but I don’t want to miss the party tonight. I ought to talk to Mark’s tutor and there may be other people there who could tell me something. Isn’t it time that we thought about turning back?”

Sophie turned her glance on Davie. He gave an almost
imperceptible shrug. Without speaking, Sophie drove the pole hard against the bank. The punt began slowly to turn.

Isabelle’s party was due to begin at eight o’clock but it was nearly nine when Sophie, Davie and Cordelia arrived. They walked to the house, which was only five minutes from Norwich Street; Cordelia never discovered the exact address. She liked the look of the house and wondered how much it was costing Isabelle’s father in rent. It was a long, white, two-storey villa with tall curved windows and green shutters, set well back from the street, with a semi-basement and a flight of steps to the front door. A similar flight led down from the sitting room to the long garden.

The sitting room was already fairly full. Looking at her fellow guests, Cordelia was glad that she had bought the kaftan. Most people seemed to have changed although not necessarily, she thought, into something more attractive. What was aimed at was originality; it was preferable to look spectacular, even bizarre, than to appear nondescript.

The sitting room was elegantly but insubstantially furnished and Isabelle had impressed on it her own untidy, impractical and iconoclastic femininity. Cordelia doubted whether the owners had provided the ornate crystal chandelier, far too heavy and large for the room, which hung like a sunburst from the middle of the ceiling, or the many silken cushions and curtains which gave the room’s austere proportions something of the ostentatious opulence of a courtesan’s boudoir. The pictures, too, must surely be Isabelle’s. No house owner letting his property would leave pictures of this quality on the walls. One, hanging above the fireplace, was of a young girl hugging a puppy. Cordelia gazed at it in excited pleasure. Surely she couldn’t mistake that individual blue of the girl’s
dress, that marvellous painting of the cheeks and plump young arms, which simultaneously absorbed and reflected light—lovely, tangible flesh. She cried out involuntarily so that people turned to look at her: “But that’s a Renoir!”

Hugo was at her elbow. He laughed. “Yes; but don’t sound so shocked, Cordelia. It’s only a small Renoir. Isabelle asked Papa for a picture for her sitting room. You didn’t expect him to provide a print of the Haywain or one of those cheap reproductions of Van Gogh’s boring old chair.”

“Would Isabelle have known the difference?”

“Oh, yes. Isabelle knows an expensive object when she sees one.”

Cordelia wondered whether the bitterness, the hard edge of contempt in his voice, was for Isabelle or for himself. They looked across the room to where she stood, smiling at them. Hugo moved towards her like a man in a dream and took her hand. Cordelia watched. Isabelle had dressed her hair in a high cluster of curls, Grecian style. She was wearing an ankle-length dress of cream matte silk, with a very low square neckline and small intricately tucked sleeves. It was obviously a model and should, Cordelia felt, have looked out of place at an informal party. But it didn’t. It merely made every other woman’s dress look like an improvisation and reduced her own, whose colours had seemed muted and subtle when she bought it, to the status of a gaudy rag.

Cordelia was determined to get Isabelle alone sometime during the evening but could see that it wasn’t going to be easy. Hugo stuck tenaciously to her side, steering her among her guests with one proprietorial hand on her waist. He seemed to be drinking steadily and Isabelle’s glass was always filled. Perhaps as the evening wore on they would get careless and there would be a chance to separate them. In the meantime,
Cordelia decided to explore the house, and a more practical matter, to find out before she needed it where the lavatory was. It was the kind of party where guests were left to find out these things for themselves.

She went up to the first floor and making her way down the passage pushed gently open the door of the far room. The smell of whisky met her immediately; it was overpowering and Cordelia instinctively slipped into the room and closed the door behind her, afraid that it might permeate the house. The room, which was in an indescribable state of disarray, wasn’t empty. On the bed and half covered by the counterpane a woman was lying; a woman with bright ginger hair splayed over the pillow and wearing a pink silk dressing gown. Cordelia walked up to the bed and looked down at her. She was insensible with drink. She lay there emitting puffs of foul, whisky-laden breath which rose like invisible balls of smoke from the half-open mouth. Her lower lip and jaw were tense and creased, giving the face a look of stern censoriousness as if she disapproved strongly of her own condition. Her thin lips were thickly painted, the strong purple stain had seeped into the cracks around the mouth so that the body looked parched in an extremity of cold. Her hands, the gnarled fingers brown with nicotine and laden with rings, lay quietly on the counterpane. Two of the talon-like nails were broken and the brick-red varnish on the others was cracked or peeled away.

The window was obstructed by a heavy dressing table. Averting her eyes from the mess of crumpled tissues, open bottles of face cream, spilt powder and half-drunk cups of what looked like black coffee, Cordelia squeezed behind it and pushed open the window. She gulped in lungfuls of fresh, cleansing air. Below her in the garden pale shapes moved
silently over the grass and between the trees like the ghosts of long-dead revellers. She left the window open and went back to the bed. There was nothing here that she could do but she placed the cold hands under the counterpane and, taking a second and warmer gown from the hook on the door, tucked it around the woman’s body. That, at least, would compensate for the fresh air blowing across the bed.

That done, Cordelia slipped back into the passage, just in time to see Isabelle coming out of the room next door. She shot out an arm and half dragged the girl back into the bedroom. Isabelle gave a little cry, but Cordelia planted her back firmly against the door and said in a low, urgent whisper: “Tell me what you know about Mark Callender.”

The violet eyes slewed from door to window as if desperate for escape. “I wasn’t there when he did it.”

“When who did what?”

Isabelle retreated towards the bed as if the inert figure, who was now groaning stertorously, could offer support. Suddenly the woman turned on her side and gave a long snort like an animal in pain. Both girls glanced at her in startled alarm. Cordelia reiterated: “When who did what?”

“When Mark killed himself; I wasn’t there.”

The woman on the bed gave a little sigh. Cordelia lowered her voice: “But you were there some days earlier, weren’t you? You called at the house and enquired for him. Miss Markland saw you. Afterwards you sat in the garden and waited until he’d finished work.”