Orchestrated Death (13 page)

Thompson looked sulky. ‘She knew about that from the beginning, Anne-Marie I mean. So she knew it wasn’t serious. Helen and
I have been together for six years now. We’ve been living together for two years. Anne-Marie knew that. She threatened to
tell Helen about – well, about the tour.’ His indignation had driven out his nervousness now. ‘It would’ve really killed Helen,
and she knew it, the bitch. And when she first joined, I thought she was such a nice girl. But underneath all that baby-face
business, she was a nasty piece of work.’

Atherton listened sympathetically, while his mind whirled at Thompson’s double standards. ‘And did she in fact tell your girlfriend?’

‘Well, no, fortunately she never did. She phoned a couple of times, and then put the phone down when Helen answered. And she
kept hanging around me in the bar during concerts and saying things in front of Helen, suggestive things, you know. Well,
Helen’s very understanding, but
there are some things a girl can’t stand. But she gave it up in the end, thank God.’

Atherton turned a page. ‘Can I have some dates from you, sir? You first met Anne-Marie when?’

‘In July, when she joined.’

‘You hadn’t known her before? I believe she was at the Royal College?’

‘I went to the Guildhall. No, I hadn’t come across her before. I think she worked out of London.’

‘And then you went on tour together – when?’

‘In August, to Athens, and then to Italy in October.’

‘Did you – sleep together on both tours?’

‘Well, yes. I mean – yes, we did.’ He looked embarrassed for once, perhaps realising that the return engagement might be construed
as having aroused expectations.

‘And it was when you came back from Italy that she started “making trouble for you”?’

Thompson frowned. ‘Well, no, not immediately. At first it was all right, but after a week or so she suddenly started this
business about marrying me.’

‘What made her change, do you think?’

He began to sweat again. ‘I don’t know. She just -
changed’

‘Is there anything you said or did that might have made her think you wanted to go on seeing her?’

‘No! No, nothing I swear it! I’m happy with Helen. I didn’t want anyone else. It was just meant to be while we were on tour,
and I never said anything about marrying her.’ He lifted anxious eyes to Atherton’s face, passive victim looking at his torturer.

‘After that session at the Television Centre on the fifteenth of January – what did you do?’

‘I came home.’

‘You didn’t go for a drink with any of your friends?’

‘No, I – I was going to go with Phil Redcliffe, but he was going with Joanna and Anne-Marie, and I wanted to avoid her. So
I just went home.’

‘Straight home?’

There was a faint hesitation. ‘Well, I just went for a drink first at a local pub, round here.’

‘Which one?’

‘Steptoes. It’s my regular.’

‘They know you there, do they? They’d remember you coming in that night?’

He looked hunted. ‘I don’t know. It was pretty crowded. I don’t know if they’d remember.’

‘Did you speak to anyone?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure of that, are you? You went to a pub for a drink and didn’t speak to anyone?’

‘I – no, I didn’t. I just had a drink and came home.’

‘What time did you get home?’

Again the slight hesitation. ‘I don’t know exactly. About half past ten or eleven o’clock, I think.’

‘Your girlfriend will be able to confirm that, I suppose.’

Thompson looked wretched. ‘She wasn’t here. She was at work. She’s on nights.’

‘She’s a shift-worker?’

‘She’s a theatre nurse at St Thomas’s.’

Atherton’s heart sang, but he betrayed no emotion. He wrote it down and said without pausing, ‘So no-one saw you at the pub,
and no-one saw you come home?’

Thompson burst out, ‘I didn’t kill her! I wouldn’t. I’m not that type. I wouldn’t have the courage, for God’s sake! Ask anyone.
I had nothing to do with it. You must believe me.’

Atherton only smiled. ‘It isn’t my business to believe or not believe, sir.’ He had found that calling young men ‘sir’ a lot
unsettled them. ‘I just have to ask these questions, as a matter of routine. What sort of car do you drive, sir?’

He looked startled. ‘Car? It’s a maroon Alfa Spyder. Why d’you want to know about my car?’

‘Just routine. Downstairs, is it?’

‘No, Helen’s borrowed it – hers is being serviced.’

‘And your young lady’s full name, sir.’

‘Helen Morris. Look, she won’t have to know about – you won’t tell her about – on tour and all that, will you?’

Atherton looked stern. ‘Not if I don’t have to, sir. But this is a murder enquiry.’

Thompson subsided unhappily, and did not think to ask what that meant. A few moments later Atherton was in his
own Sierra and driving away, mentally rubbing his hands. He’s lying, he thought, and he’s scared shitless – now we only have
to find out what about. And best of all, the girlfriend is a theatre nurse. A much more promising lead, he thought, even than
the Brown one.

The Lodge, Stourton-on-Fosse, had evidently never been anyone’s lodge, and from the look of it Slider deduced that if Anne-Marie
had been poor, it was not hereditary. It was an elegant, expensive, neo-classical villa, built in the Thirties of handsome
red brick, with white pillars and porticoes and green shutters. Its grounds were extensive and immaculate, with a gravelled
drive leading from the white five-barred gate which looked as though it had been raked with a fine-toothed comb and weeded
with tweezers.

‘Crikey,’ said Joanna weakly as they drove slowly past the gate to have a look.

‘Is that all you can say about it?’

‘It’s the smell of money making me feel faint. I never knew she came from this sort of background.’

‘You said it was a large house in the village.’

‘Yes, but I was thinking of a four-bed, double-fronted Edwardian villa, the sort of thing that goes for a hundred and fifty
thousand in North Acton. You need practice to imagine anything as rich as this.’

‘Did she never give any hint that there was money in the family?’

‘Nary a one. She lived in a crummy sort of bedsit – oh, you’ve seen it, of course – and as far as I know, she lived off what
she earned in the Orchestra. She never mentioned private income or rich relatives. Perhaps she was proud.’

‘You said she didn’t get on with her aunt.’

‘I said I got that impression. She didn’t say so in so many words.’ Slider stopped the car and turned it in a farm gateway.
‘Are you going to drive in?’

‘On that gravel? I wouldn’t dare. No, I’ll park out in the lane.’

‘Then I can wait for you in the car.’

‘I thought of that too.’

‘I bet you did.’ She leaned over and kissed him, short and full, on the mouth. He felt dizzy.

‘Don’t,’ he said unconvincingly. She kissed him again, more slowly, and when she stopped he said, ‘Now I’m going to have to
walk up the drive with my coat held closed.’

‘I thought it would give you the courage to face people above your station,’ she said gravely.

He pushed her hand away and wriggled out, leaning back in for one last kiss. ‘Be good,’ he said. ‘Bark if anyone comes.’

An elderly maid or housekeeper opened the door to him and showed him into a drawing-room handsomely furnished with antiques,
a thick, washed-Chinese carpet on the polished parquet, and heavy velvet curtains at the French windows. Just what he would
have expected it to look like, judging from the outside. Left alone, he walked round the room a little, looking at the pictures.
He didn’t know much about paintings, but judging by the frames these were expensive and old, and some of them were of horses.
Everything was spotless and well polished, and the air smelled of lavender wax.

He made a second circuit, examining the ornaments this time, and noting that there were no photographs, not even on the top
of the piano, which he thought unusual for a house of this sort, and particularly for an aunt of her generation. It was a
remarkably impersonal room, revealing nothing but that there had been, at some point in the family’s history, a lot of money.

He perched on the edge of a slippery, brocade sofa, and then the door opened and two Cairn terriers shot in yapping hysterically,
closely followed by a white toy poodle, its coat stained disagreeably brown around eyes and anus. Slider drew back his feet
as the terriers darted alternately at them, while the poodle stood and glared, its muzzle drawn back to show its yellow teeth
in a continuous rattling snarl.

Mrs Ringwood followed them in. ‘Boys, boys,’ she admonished them, without conviction. ‘They’ll be quite all right if you just
ignore them.’

Slider, doubting it, regarded Anne-Marie’s aunt with astonishment. He had been expecting a stout and ample
aunt, a tightly-coiffeured termagant; but Mrs Ringwood, though in her late fifties, was small and very slim, with bright golden
hair cut in an Audrey Hepburn urchin. Her jewellery was expensively chunky, her clothes so fashionable that Slider had seen
nothing remotely like them in the high street. She sat opposite him angularly, her thin legs crossed high up, her heavy bracelets
rattling down her arms like shackles. The whole impression was so girlish that unless one saw her face, one would have thought
her in her twenties.

Slider began by offering his condolences, though Mrs Ringwood showed no sign of needing or welcoming them.

‘It must have been a terrible shock to you,’ he persisted, ‘and I’m sorry to have to intrude on you at such a moment.’

‘You must do your job, of course,’ she conceded reluctantly. ‘Though I may as well tell you at once that Anne-Marie and I
were not close. We had no great affection for one another.’

Didn’t anyone like the poor creature? Slider thought, while saying aloud, ‘It’s very frank of you to tell me so, ma’am.’

‘I would not like anything to hamper your investigation. I think it better to be open with you from the beginning. You believe
she was murdered, I understand?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘It seems very unlikely. How could a girl like that have enemies? However, you know best I suppose.’

‘You brought Miss Austen up from childhood, I believe?’

‘I was made responsible for her when my sister died,’ Mrs Ringwood said, making it clear that there was a world of difference.
‘I was the child’s only close relative, so it was expected that I should become responsible for her, and I accepted that.
But I did not think myself qualified – or obliged – to become a second mother to her. I sent her to a good boarding school,
and in the holidays she lived here under the charge of a governess. I did my duty by her.’

‘It must have been something of a financial burden to you,’ Slider tried. ‘School fees and so on.’

She looked at him shrewdly. ‘Anne-Marie’s school fees and living expenses were paid for out of the trust. Her grandfather
– my father – was a very wealthy man. It was he who
built this house. Rachel – Anne-Marie’s mother – and I were brought up here, and of course we expected to share his estate
when he died. But Rachel married without his approval, and he disowned her and left everything to me, except for the amount
left in trust for Anne-Marie’s upbringing. So you see I suffered no personal expense in the matter.’

‘Anne-Marie was the only child of the marriage?’

Mrs Ringwood assented.

‘And when she finished school, what happened then?’

‘She went to the Royal College of Music in London to study the violin. It was the only thing she had ever shown any interest
in, and for that reason I encouraged her. I insisted that she could not remain here doing nothing, which I’m afraid was what
she wanted to do. She was always a lazy child, giving to mooning about and daydreaming. I told her she must earn her own living
and not look to me to keep her. So she did three years at the College, and then went to the Birmingham Municipal Orchestra,
and took a flat in Birmingham. The rest I’m sure you know.’

‘How much did you know about her life in London?’

‘Nothing at all. I rarely go to London, and when I do I shop and take lunch with an old friend. I never visited her there.’

‘But she came to see you here?’

‘From time to time.’

‘How often did she come?’

‘Three or four times a year, perhaps.’

‘And when was the last time?’

‘Last year – October, I think, or November. Yes, early November. She had just been on a tour with her Orchestra.’

‘Did she mention any particular reason for visiting you at that time?’

‘No. But she never discussed her personal life. She came from time to time, on a formal basis, that’s all.’

‘Did you pay her an allowance?’

She looked slightly disconcerted at the question. ‘While she was at the College, I was obliged to. Once she had her own establishment
and was capable of earning her own living, I considered my obligations as having ceased.’

‘Did you ever give or lend her money?’

She looked pinker. ‘Certainly not. It would have been very bad for her to think that she could come to me for money whenever
she wanted to.’

‘She had no other income? Nothing except her salary from the Orchestra?’

‘Not that I was aware of.’

‘Did you know that she owned a very rare and valuable violin, a Stradivarius?’

Mrs Ringwood displayed neither surprise nor interest. ‘I knew nothing about her private life, her London life. I am not interested
in music, and I know nothing about violins.’

Slider did not press this, though surely everyone must know what a Stradivarius was, and anyone would be surprised if a penniless
relative turned out to own one. He felt Mrs Ringwood was departing somewhat from her self-imposed duty of complete openness.

‘On that last visit, in November, did she talk about any of her friends?’

‘I really cannot remember at this distance what she talked about.’

‘But you said she had just been on tour – presumably then she must have mentioned it to you?’

‘She must have spoken about it, I suppose. The places she’d been to, and the concerts she’d done. But as to friends -’ Mrs
Ringwood looked irritable. ‘As far as I knew she never had any. When I was her age I was always up and doing -parties, tennis,
dances – scores of friends – and admirers. But Anne-Marie never seemed to have any interest in anything, except drooping about
the house and reading. She seemed to have no
go
in her at all!’