by R. N. Morris
‘I just wanted to … see you.’
‘See me?’
‘To see how you’re bearing up.’
‘That’s … very decent of you.’
‘Also, I wanted to reassure you.’
Emma gave a guarded nod, encouraging him to go on, without committing herself.
‘You have nothing to worry about. I destroyed it.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The handkerchief. With Aidan’s blood on it. I burnt it for you.’
‘I didn’t ask you to do that.’
‘No, but I thought … well, if the police knew how much blood there was on your hands … You needn’t worry. I won’t tell them.’
‘I told you. I took his pulse.’
‘There was a lot of blood, Emma. More blood than that.’
‘That might have been your impression, but I can assure you …’
‘It’s all right. I understand. I know what a beast he was. Why you did it. You needn’t worry. I won’t say anything.’
‘But you said yourself, it was that piano tuner person. You saw him.’
‘Yes. Who was that? Someone who helped you do it? I hope it’s someone you can trust, otherwise we’re in trouble.’
‘We?’
‘Don’t you see? I’m compromised too, now. I’ve destroyed evidence for you.’
‘What do you want from me? Money, is it? For your sister and that child of hers?’
‘Money? No, this isn’t about money!’
Understanding dawned on her face, which did not result in the expression he might have hoped for. ‘Oh, God … don’t tell me …’
‘I would do anything for you, Emma.’
‘You don’t know what you’re saying. You don’t know anything about it.’
‘I know all I need to know. I know I …’
‘Don’t. Please, don’t.’
‘I understand. It’s too soon. I just wanted you to know, you can count on me.’
A look of calculation came over Emma’s face. ‘I do appreciate … everything you’ve done for me. But it’s not what you think. I can’t explain now. Perhaps one day. Until then, you’ll just have to trust me.’
‘Of course.’
She rushed to cross the space that stood between them, taking his hands in hers, raising them to her mouth to kiss.
‘Thank you, Paul.’
His heart felt like scattered feathers in the air.
THIRTY-SIX
DI Leversedge stood on the embankment and watched as the Model-T with the governor in the back was driven away by Macadam. He gave a small salute, which he may or may not have meant to be ironic, he couldn’t decide. He didn’t think so. Not ironic exactly. More sardonic; expressive, he hoped, of a shared cynicism. The grim cynicism of the professional police detective. A gesture of respect, perhaps, but one that asked for that respect to be reciprocated.
Leversedge accepted it was a lot of meaning to invest in a simple movement of the hand.
There was a sound like a gun discharging causing the car to swerve uncertainly. It was just the engine backfiring, but it had clearly been enough to throw Macadam off his stride. That was understandable. They were all jumpy, what with young Willoughby getting gunned down like that.
What would he have to do to prove his loyalty to Quinn? Obviously it would help if he could be the one to crack the Fonthill case and bring in Willoughby’s killer. Yesterday he had felt sure that he was on to something with his theory about the Russian dancer. But now he was not so sure. Quinn’s reaction had been discouraging.
Leversedge felt a kindling of resentment. No matter what he did, Quinn would never trust him. Nothing he could do would be good enough.
That was clear from the way he was being sidelined from the main investigation. What made it worse – and what made him hate Quinn even more – was that deep down he knew that he had brought all this on himself.
Naturally, they had to go through the list of suspects, eliminating those who had an alibi, or were otherwise in the clear, as Inchball had by all accounts done with that fellow Masters. But Inchball was a plodding brute, a foot soldier without ambition. He was even talking about leaving the force to join the army.
It wouldn’t do for Leversedge to get caught in the same trap. That kind of methodical policing had its place, of course, same as house-to-house enquiries, and combing waste ground for clues. But Leversedge saw himself more as your brilliant detective, using deductive reasoning and a heightened understanding of human nature – dare he say psychology? – to make inspired leaps of the imagination to work out who the perpetrator was. Of course, he knew that there were dangers in this approach. One man’s startling insights could be another’s wild guesswork. And if you weren’t careful it led to the kinds of shortcuts that his old boss Coddington had taken.
Coddington had been a great one for hunches. Never doubted his hunches. And if the evidence wasn’t there to back them up, well, he’d make sure that it was, one way or another.
That wasn’t Leversedge’s way, never had been, though he was sure Quinn suspected him of shady practices. He found himself tarred with the same brush, through no fault of his own. Guilt by association, it was, and it wasn’t fair.
The sensible thing would be to show him how he too could be the loyal foot soldier when required. Talk to the Russians and the Belgian and the opera singer, like he’d said he would. Maybe it would turn up something. Or maybe it would turn out to be a complete waste of time, and if so, who would that help?
He’d found out from Macadam and Inchball that Quinn had gone off to talk to Kell. He’d given nothing away when he’d come back, just ordered Macadam to get the car. But something had rattled him, Leversedge could see that.
Something to do with the case, too, he shouldn’t wonder.
He knew Kell and his second in command, Irons, by sight. You could always tell when Kell entered the room from the pong of his medicinal cigarettes. And Irons could often be found propping up the saloon bar of the Red Lion at lunchtime, invariably drinking alone, downing a pint in resolute silence.
Leversedge consulted his pocket watch. Time he was heading over to the Ritz Hotel, where he had discovered from newspaper accounts that the Russians were staying.
If he played his cards right, there might be time to stop for a pint himself later on.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Quinn did his best not to look at the maid’s birthmark as he asked to see Lady Fonthill. Before the maid had a chance to respond, another servant, a middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair and cheeks rouged by broken veins appeared behind her. ‘Thank you, Marie, I’ll deal with this.’ The man’s accent had a faint Irish lilt to it.
Quinn took out his warrant card. ‘I am Detective Chief Inspector Quinn of the Special Crimes Department. These gentlemen are policemen too.’
Macadam was there on the doorstep beside Quinn. Also with them was Special Constable Elgar. This had been Macadam’s idea. He had argued that Elgar’s presence, given his celebrity, would act as a catalyst, helping to gain Lady Fonthill’s trust and loosen her tongue. His musical expertise would come in handy too, or so Macadam theorized. Quinn was not sure how exactly, and suspected that Macadam only wanted the composer to be there so that he could spend more time in the company of one of his heroes. ‘He has a great brain on him, you know,’ Macadam had insisted. ‘We should take advantage of it while we can.’
Quinn had been too exhausted to argue, and so they had called in at Hampstead Police Station to collect this invaluable brain. As it happened, Elgar was not on duty that morning, but Sergeant Kennedy was happy to provide them with his address. By a coincidence that Macadam insisted on seeing as fortuitous, it turned out that he lived on the same street as the Fonthills.
Elgar had been rather flustered by the arrival of the two detectives, protesting that he did not have his uniform and that he had work to do. At this, he looked rather sheepishly over his shoulder as a sharp female voice, presumably his wife’s, had call
ed out: ‘Edward? Who is that? What are you doing?’
A moment later, the woman had appeared, an expression of stern disapproval on her face as she glowered slightly myopically at the strange men in conference with her husband.
‘Who are these men?’ she had demanded, her mouth set grimly.
‘They are policemen. I have to go with them,’ said Elgar, grabbing an overcoat and a rather dapper homburg from the hatstand by the front door. ‘Duty calls, my dear.’
As he had closed the door behind them, Elgar had exhaled noisily in relief.
The Fonthills’ Irish servant scowled furiously, as unimpressed by their credentials as Mrs Elgar had been. ‘Her ladyship has already spoken to the police.’
‘Yes. We wish to speak to her again.’
‘She is with her children. The children are very upset.’
‘Naturally. It is a terrible thing to lose your father,’ said Quinn, his voice quavering with a wholly private emotion. After a beat, he added, ‘So young. They are young, I think? I believe Lady Fonthill mentioned a nanny.’
‘Yes, the children are very young. And they do have a nanny, Miss Greene.’
‘Miss Greene, you say?’ Quinn made a note of the name. ‘According to Lady Fonthill, Sir Aidan had initiated an affair with Miss Greene.’
There was a gasp from Marie, who despite having been dismissed was still loitering in the hallway.
‘What a damnable lie!’ cried the butler. ‘How dare you stand there on our doorstep and broadcast such terrible slanders!’
‘Perhaps it would be better if we came in,’ suggested Quinn, as if the main objection was the fact of his being on the doorstep. He looked up at the sky, which was sealed over with low cloud.
The manservant’s jaw dropped in astonishment, all resistance disarmed by the detective’s unconventional approach. Whether he meant to or not, he let them in.
‘Just for the record, so that we have all the details straight, you are?’
‘I?’
‘Yes, you.’
‘I am Callaghan.’
‘Callaghan. I see. And this is?’ Quinn indicated the maid with the stub of his pencil.
‘This is Marie.’
‘Hello, Marie.’ Quinn tried very hard to smile reassuringly. From the way Marie jumped back in alarm, he was not convinced that he had pulled it off. ‘Your surname, please.’
The maid blushed so deeply that her birthmark almost disappeared. She bowed her head and whispered something inaudibly in reply.
‘I’m sorry. Could you speak up, please?’
She managed to find her voice, just, saying the two syllables of her name with a throbbing wonder as if it was the first word she had ever spoken: ‘Driscoll.’
‘Thank you. Miss Driscoll. I just need to ask you both a few questions, so that I can build up a picture of what happened here at the house prior to Sir Aidan’s death.’
‘I thought you wanted to talk to Lady Fonthill,’ objected Callaghan.
‘Oh, I will need to talk to everyone. Including Miss Greene. And possibly even the children.’
‘The children? Man, have you no feelings? What do you hope to get from them? They are innocents in all of this.’
‘In all of what, Mr Callaghan?’
‘You come here with your dirty minds, digging things up. It’s not fair, I tell you.’
‘I’m just trying to understand what kind of a man Sir Aidan was. What kind of a husband he was. What kind of a father. What kind of an employer.’
‘He was a good employer, if that’s what you’re asking,’ said Callaghan, his head tilted defiantly, as if he expected to be called a liar over this.
‘Miss Driscoll?’
The girl looked down and blushed again. She gave a helpless, wordless shrug that spoke volumes.
‘There was no truth in what Lady Fonthill said then, about Sir Aidan and Miss Greene?’
Callaghan cut in quickly, as if to prevent Marie from saying anything. ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ was his careful response.
‘But you would not say that it was … out of the question, given Sir Aidan’s … habits and … interests.’
‘This is all just tittle-tattle,’ exclaimed Callaghan disgustedly.
‘And yet he was unfaithful to Lady Fonthill. We know, for instance, that he fathered a child with a woman called Anna Seddon.’
‘I know nothing about that,’ insisted Callaghan, his voice rising with desperation.
‘We always start with a motive. Jealousy is a strong motive.’
‘What are you suggesting? Have you come here, to this house, on this day, to a house in mourning, to make these vile accusations against a grieving widow, the mother of two beautiful children? The loving wife of their father?’
‘Do you know of anyone else who might have wished Sir Aidan dead?’
‘Oh, you are a man! You are quite a man!’
Quinn was not sure what Callaghan meant by this observation, but it seemed that the butler was struggling to contain a rage that threatened to explode in violence. ‘Can you account for your own movements yesterday, say from twelve thirty p.m. onwards?’
‘Me? You want me for it now, do you? Is it because I am Irish? Is that it? What? I have risen up against my master and slain him? Is this the bloody revolution come?’
‘Is it?’
‘You are a mockery of a man! Indeed, you are.’
‘Now, now, if we can just keep it civil here,’ said Macadam, stepping forward with a warning glare flashed in Quinn’s direction.
Perhaps he had goaded Callaghan too much. But in so doing he had at least revealed the man’s temper. Nevertheless, he was content to yield the interview to Macadam.
‘We may have got off on the wrong foot here, Mr Callaghan,’ continued Macadam, his tone conciliatory. ‘DCI Quinn has been under considerable strain since yesterday’s terrible events, as indeed have we all. You may have heard that as well as Sir Aidan, one of our own officers was killed.’
‘Yes, I had heard that. A terrible business. Will you be accusing me of that now?’
‘No, no, not at all. We would just like to know if you have seen or heard anything suspicious in the last few days. Anything out of the ordinary at all. Any strangers coming to the house? Did Sir Aidan seem anxious or out of sorts at all?’
Callaghan’s head lifted minutely. His eyes narrowed. ‘There was a man,’ he said.
‘A man?’
‘I didn’t see him. But Sir Aidan did. And it seemed to unsettle him, that it did.’
‘Where did he see him?’
‘He said he was out the front, watching the house.’
‘Did he come to the house? Did he speak to Sir Aidan?’
‘If he did, I did not admit him.’
‘Marie, did you let in a strange man?’
The maid shook her head vehemently.
‘When was this?’ Macadam kept his tone admirably light and unhurried.
Quinn, on the contrary, felt himself tense with impatience. ‘What did he look like, this man?’
‘I told you, I didn’t see him.’ Callaghan’s tone was hostile, wounded still by his earlier brush with Quinn.
‘Did Sir Aidan not describe him to you?’
‘Now why should he do that?’
Macadam winced. Quinn recognized that it was in frustration at his own intervention. He conceded his fault with a hesitant dip of the head.
‘Can we get back to the question of when,’ said Macadam patiently.
‘Let me see. It would have been …’ Callaghan jabbed a finger in the air, as if to pin down the day. ‘Friday. That’s it. It was the day that parcel arrived. You remember it, Marie. The mysterious parcel.’
Marie’s head bobbed up and down energetically.
Quinn and Macadam looked at each other. Special Constable Elgar raised an eyebrow.
‘What was so mysterious about this parcel?’
‘It didn’t come in the regular post. And it seemed to upset the mas
ter somewhat.’
‘What was in the parcel?’ demanded Quinn.
‘I didn’t see him open it,’ replied Callaghan tetchily. The equanimity with which he answered Macadam’s questions was not extended to those from Quinn. ‘So I cannot say for certain. But there is an object has appeared in his studio that wasn’t there before.’
‘What is it?’
‘It is a box.’
There were few things as conducive to mystery as a box. Despite his relative inexperience as a detective, Special Constable Elgar seemed to feel this instinctively. The eyebrow that had risen before was now hiked up another notch, as if it functioned as a gauge of astonishment.
Callaghan led them to a room at the rear of the house. Bookshelves lined two of the walls. There was a fireplace, at present unlit, so that the air had a sharp chill to it. A large gilt-framed mirror was suspended above the mantel, which made the room feel larger than it was. In one corner, a glass-fronted cabinet stood, containing various decanters and crystal glasses. A desk covered in green leather, with mahogany drawers, was crammed beneath a window that looked out on to a bleak, weather-blasted garden.
But the room was dominated by a single object: the black, highly polished grand piano that almost filled the remaining space.
Quinn tried to form an impression of the man whose room this was, beyond the obvious inferences. Musical, yes. But the imposing presence of the huge instrument suggested an insistence on his musicality to the expense of everything, and everyone, else. It smacked of ostentation. That was not to say that the piano was there purely for show. Or rather, the show was not for the outside world. The show was for Sir Aidan Fonthill himself, for him to bolster the idea and image of himself that he had constructed, that of a great musician.
It was here, in this room, that he had created the illusion of his identity.
Perhaps the word ‘illusion’ was too strong. But Quinn believed that most people’s sense of their own identity was based on self-deception. Experience had shown him that this was especially so for two categories of humans: murderers and their victims. More often than people realized, the ultimate motive for murder was to prevent a truth emerging. Invariably, this truth was at its core to do with a version of self presented to the world. Equally, when someone ended up murdered, it often turned out that they were not the person those closest to them had believed them to be.
