The Human Factor (19 page)

‘Who's the woman with the handkerchief? She seems upset about something.'

‘That's my wife,' Colonel Daintry said. ‘I hope we can slip away before she notices.'

‘You can't do that. Your daughter won't even know you've come.'

The registrar began to speak. Someone said ‘Shhh', as though they were in a theatre and the curtain had risen.

‘Your son-in-law's name is Clutters,' Castle whispered.

‘Are you sure?'

‘No, but it sounded like that.'

The registrar gave the kind of brief Godless good wishes which are sometimes described as a lay sermon and a few people left, looking at watches as an excuse. ‘Don't you think we could go too?' Daintry asked.

‘No.'

All the same no one seemed to notice them as they stood in Victoria Street. The taxis came winging in like birds of prey and Daintry made one more effort to escape.

‘It's not fair to your daughter,' Castle argued.

‘I don't even know where they're all going,' Daintry said. ‘To a hotel, I suppose.'

‘We can follow.'

And follow they did – all the way to Harrods and beyond through a thin autumnal mist.

‘I can't think what hotel . . .' Daintry said. ‘I believe we've lost them.' He leant forward to examine the car ahead. ‘No such luck. I can see the back of my wife's head.'

‘It's not much to go by.'

‘All the same I'm pretty sure of it. We were married for fifteen years.' He added gloomily, ‘And we haven't spoken for seven.'

‘Champagne will help,' Castle said.

‘But I don't like champagne. It's awfully good of you, Castle, to come with me. I couldn't have faced this alone.'

‘We'll just have one glass and go away.'

‘I can't imagine where we are heading. I haven't been down this way for years. There seem to be so many new hotels.'

They proceeded in fits and starts down the Brompton Road.

‘One generally goes to the bride's home,' Castle said, ‘if it's not to a hotel.'

‘She hasn't got a home. Officially she shares a flat with some girl-friend, but apparently she's been living quite a while with this chap Clutters. Clutters! What a name!'

‘The name may not have been Clutters. The registrar was very indistinct.'

The taxis began to deliver the other guests like gift-wrapped parcels at a small too-pretty house in a crescent. It was lucky there were not many of them – the houses here had not been built for large parties. Even with two dozen people one felt the walls might bend or the floors give way.

‘I think I know where we are – my wife's flat,' Daintry said. ‘I heard she'd bought something in Kensington.'

They edged their way up the overloaded stairs into a drawing-room. From every table, from the bookshelves, the piano, from the mantel, china owls gazed at the guests, alert, predatory, with cruel curved beaks. ‘Yes, it
is
her flat,' Daintry said. ‘She always had a passion for owls – but the passion's grown since my day.'

They couldn't see his daughter in the crowd which clustered before the buffet. Champagne bottles popped intermittently. There was a wedding cake, and a plaster owl was even balanced on the top of the pink sugar scaffolding. A tall man with a moustache trimmed exactly like Daintry's came up to them and said, ‘I don't know who you are, but do help yourselves to the champers.' Judging by the slang he must have dated back nearly to the First World War. He had the absent-minded air of a rather ancient host. ‘We've saved on waiters,' he explained.

‘I'm Daintry.'

‘Daintry?'

‘This is my daughter's marriage,' Daintry said in a voice as dry as a biscuit.

‘Oh, then you must be Sylvia's husband?'

‘Yes. I didn't catch
your
name.'

The man went away calling, ‘Sylvia! Sylvia!'

‘Let's get out,' Daintry said in desperation.

‘You must say hello to your daughter.'

A woman burst her way through the guests at the buffet. Castle recognized the woman who had wept at the registrar's, but she didn't look at all like weeping now. She said, ‘Darling, Edward told me you were here. How nice of you to come. I know how desperately busy you always are.'

‘Yes, we really have to be going. This is Mr Castle. From the office.'

‘That damned office. How do you do, Mr Castle? I must find Elizabeth – and Colin.'

‘Don't disturb them. We really have to be going.'

‘I'm only up for the day myself. From Brighton. Edward drove me up.'

‘Who's Edward?'

‘He's been awfully helpful. Ordering the champagne and things. A woman needs a man on these occasions. You haven't changed a bit, darling. How long is it?'

‘Six – seven years?'

‘How time flies.'

‘You've collected a lot more owls.'

‘Owls?' She went away calling, ‘Colin, Elizabeth, come over here.' They came hand in hand. Daintry didn't associate his daughter with child-like tenderness, but she probably thought hand-holding a duty at a wedding.

Elizabeth said, ‘How sweet of you to make it, Father. I know how you hate this sort of thing.'

‘I've never experienced it before.' He looked at her companion, who wore a carnation and a very new pin-stripe suit. His hair was jet black and well combed around the ears.

‘How do you do, sir. Elizabeth has spoken such a lot about you.'

‘I can't say the same,' Daintry said. ‘So you are Colin Clutters?'

‘Not Clutters, Father. Whatever made you think that? His name's Clough. I mean
our
name's Clough.'

A surge of latecomers who had not been at the registry office had separated Castle from Colonel Daintry. A man in a double-breasted waistcoat told him, ‘I don't know a soul here – except Colin, of course.'

There was a smash of breaking china. Mrs Daintry's voice rose above the clamour. ‘For Christ's sake, Edward, is it one of the owls?'

‘No, no, don't worry, dear. Only an ashtray.'

‘Not a soul,' repeated the man with the waistcoat. ‘My name's Joiner by the way.'

‘Mine's Castle.'

‘You know Colin?'

‘No, I came with Colonel Daintry.'

‘Who's he?'

‘The bride's father.'

Somewhere a telephone began to ring. No one paid any attention.

‘You ought to have a word with young Colin. He's a bright lad.'

‘He's got a strange surname, hasn't he?'

‘Strange?'

‘Well . . . Clutters . . .'

‘His name's Clough.'

‘Oh, then I heard it wrong.'

Again something broke. Edward's voice rose reassuringly above the din. ‘Don't worry, Sylvia. Nothing serious. All the owls are safe.'

‘He's quite revolutionized our publicity.'

‘You work together?'

‘You might say I
am
Jameson's Baby Powder.'

The man called Edward grasped Castle's arm. He said, ‘Is your name Castle?'

‘Yes.'

‘Somebody wants you on the telephone.'

‘But no one knows I'm here.'

‘It's a girl. She's a bit upset. Said it was urgent.'

Castle's thoughts went to Sarah. She knew that he was attending this wedding, but not even Daintry knew where they were going to end up. Was Sam ill again? He asked, ‘Where's the telephone?'

‘Follow me,' but when they reached it – a white telephone beside a white double bed, guarded by a white owl – the receiver had been put back. ‘Sorry,' Edward said, ‘I expect she'll ring again.'

‘Did she give a name?'

‘Couldn't hear it with all this noise going on. Had an impression that she'd been crying. Come and have some more champers.'

‘If you don't mind, I'll stay here near the phone.'

‘Well, excuse me if I don't stay here with you. I have to look after all these owls, you see. Sylvia would be heartbroken if one of them got damaged. I suggested we tidied them away, but she's got more than a hundred of them. The place would have looked a bit bare without them. Are you a friend of Colonel Daintry?'

‘We work in the same office.'

‘One of those hush-hush jobs, isn't it? A bit embarrassing for me meeting him like this. Sylvia didn't think he'd come. Perhaps I ought to have stayed away myself. Tactful. But then who would have looked after the owls?'

Castle sat down on the edge of the great white bed, and the white owl glared at him beside the white telephone as if it recognized him as an illegal immigrant who had just perched on the edge of this strange continent of snow – even the walls were white and there was a white rug under his feet. He was afraid – afraid for Sam, afraid for Sarah, afraid for himself – fear poured like an invisible gas from the mouth of the silent telephone. He and all he loved were menaced by the mysterious call. The clamour of voices from the living-room seemed now no more than a rumour of distant tribes beyond the desert of snow. Then the telephone rang. He pushed the white owl to one side and lifted the receiver.

To his relief he heard Cynthia's voice. ‘Is that M.C.?'

‘Yes, how did you know where to find me?'

‘I tried the registry office, but you'd left So I found a Mrs Daintry in the telephone book.'

‘What's the matter, Cynthia? You sound odd.'

‘M.C., an awful thing has happened. Arthur's dead.'

Again, as once before, he wondered for a moment who Arthur was.

‘Davis? Dead? But he was coming back to the office next week.'

‘I know. The daily found him when she went to – to make his bed.' Her voice broke.

‘I'll come back to the office, Cynthia. Have you seen Doctor Percival?'

‘He rang me up to tell me.'

‘I must go and tell Colonel Daintry.'

‘Oh, M.C., I wish I'd been nicer to him. All I ever did for him was – was to make his bed.' He could hear her catch her breath, trying not to sob.

‘I'll be back as soon as I can.' He rang off.

The living-room was as crowded as ever and just as noisy. The cake had been cut and people were looking for unobtrusive places to hide their portions. Daintry stood alone with a slice in his fingers behind a table littered with owls. He said, ‘For God's sake, let's be off, Castle. I don't understand this sort of thing.'

‘Daintry, I've had a call from the office. Davis is dead.'

‘Davis?'

‘He's dead. Doctor Percival . . .'

‘Percival!' Daintry exclaimed. ‘My God, that man . . .' He pushed his slice of cake among the owls and a big grey owl toppled off and smashed on the floor.

‘Edward,' a woman's voice shrieked, ‘John's broken the grey owl.'

Edward thrust his way towards them. ‘I can't be everywhere at once, Sylvia.'

Mrs Daintry appeared behind him. She said, ‘John, you damned old boring fool, I'll never forgive you for this – never. What the hell are you doing anyway in
my
house?'

Daintry said, ‘Come away, Castle. I'll buy you another owl, Sylvia.'

‘It's irreplaceable, that one.'

‘A man's dead,' Daintry said. ‘He's irreplaceable too.'

2

‘I had not expected this to happen,' Doctor Percival told them.

To Castle it seemed an oddly indifferent phrase for him to use, a phrase as cold as the poor body which lay in crumpled pyjamas stretched out upon the bed, the jacket wide open and the bare chest exposed, where no doubt they had long since listened and searched in vain for the least sound of a heartbeat. Doctor Percival had struck him hitherto as a very genial man, but the geniality was chilled in the presence of the dead, and there was an incongruous note of embarrassed apology in the strange phrase he had uttered.

The sudden change had come as a shock to Castle, when he found himself standing in this neglected room, after all the voices of strangers, the flocks of china owls and the explosion of corks at Mrs Daintry's. Doctor Percival had fallen silent again after that one unfortunate phrase and nobody else spoke. He stood back from the bed rather as though he were exhibiting a picture to a couple of unkind critics, and was waiting in apprehension for their judgement. Daintry was silent too. He seemed content to watch Doctor Percival as if it were up to him to explain away some obvious fault which he was expected to find in the painting.

Castle felt an urge to break the long silence.

‘Who are those men in the sitting-room? What are they doing?'

Doctor Percival turned with reluctance away from the bed. ‘What men? Oh, those. I asked the Special Branch to take a look around.'

‘Why? Do you think he was killed?'

‘No, no. Of course not. Nothing of that kind. His liver was in a shocking state. He had an X-ray a few days ago.'

‘Then why did you say you didn't expect . . .?'

‘I didn't expect things to go so rapidly.'

‘I suppose there'll be a post mortem?'

‘Of course. Of course.'

The ‘of courses' multiplied like flies round the body.

Castle went back into the sitting-room. There was a bottle of whisky and a used glass and a copy of
Playboy
on the coffee table.

‘I told him he had to stop drinking,' Doctor Percival called after Castle. ‘He wouldn't pay attention.'