‘Look, he was loaded. Big house, big job. I always double my charges at least when I’ve got a client who’s rolling in it. They don’t often complain. They’re always a bit ashamed of hiring a private dick anyway, and they don’t want to demean themselves any further by quibbling about money. He paid up like a lamb by return of post. Just as well, considering what’s happened to him. It’d be a bit embarrassing to ask his family to pay up.’
That was enough for Milton. He couldn’t stand another minute of this revolting creep. He gritted his teeth, said a polite goodbye and headed off to meet one of Ritchie’s victims.
Chapter Twenty-four
Martin Jenkins was sitting behind a cluttered desk in a modest room in his headquarters. It looked as if he lived up to his egalitarian principles—in public at least. Milton wondered how he would cope with a rich wife. He couldn’t quite see this scrawny individual, who seemed to have several buttons missing from his chain-store suit, sitting in Lady Clark’s drawing-room. Still, it was amazing how you could get used to money. Milton had himself always had pretty simple tastes, but Ann’s large income made it surprisingly easy to develop a liking for decent wine, expensive holidays and good restaurants. He remembered the curry house and shuddered apprehensively. How many years was it since he’d regarded a third-class meal in an Indian restaurant as a treat to be looked forward to? Did Jenkins starve himself, or was a high metabolic rate concomitant with the fire of conviction in his Welsh belly?
‘Sit down, Superintendent.’
‘Thank you, sir. I’m sorry that I had to postpone our appointment.’
‘That’s quite all right, Superintendent. I understand the pressures you must be operating under.’
Milton felt buoyed up by this unexpectedly polite reception from the scourge of the police force. The soft Welsh voice went on. ‘I know what you’ve come to talk to me about. I’ve heard from Eleanor.’
‘I hope Lady Clark wasn’t too upset about having to answer questions about her relationship with you.’
‘No, she wasn’t, Superintendent. I must admit that I was furious when she first told me about it. I was thinking of lodging a complaint about your intrusiveness, but Eleanor talked me round. She said you’d been very apologetic about the whole business and that it would be better for me to cooperate.’
Good for Lady Clark. Love’s turned this one soft. ‘Lady Clark has told me about how you got involved with each other, sir, and that she was going to move in with you. What I need to know is: first, what your relationship with Sir Nicholas was like generally, and second, whether you know if he had any idea you were having an affair with his wife.’
‘I didn’t have a relationship with Sir Nicholas. I met him only a few times—after I’d got to know Eleanor. It’s not easy meeting a man you’re cuckolding. I went out of my way to avoid talking to him. Where I come from, what I was doing was something to be ashamed of, and, though I couldn’t regret my affair with Eleanor, my Methodist background made me feel embarrassed every time I caught sight of her husband.’
‘Apart from the embarrassment, how did you feel about him, sir?’
‘I disliked him, of course. He represented everything I distrust most in our society. He had sold out to the Establishment and seemed to be using his position to block every proposal the Left ever put up to his department for increasing employment in the recycling industry.’
‘But surely that was a matter for his Secretary of State rather than Sir Nicholas himself?’
‘Come now, Superintendent. I know who runs this country. Poor old Harvey Nixon is completely in the hands of his civil servants. All he ever did was sign or read out the decisions Sir Nicholas fed him.’
‘Lady Clark has presumably told you what happened over Mr Nixon’s speech at the Monday morning meeting.’
‘Yes. It made me sick, but I wasn’t really surprised. Harvey isn’t a fool. He might not be up to the job, but he does his homework all right. I knew there was something peculiar about his performance that morning, and I felt sorry for him. I may be a critic of the government’s flabbiness, but I couldn’t take any pleasure in seeing one of its most decent members reduced to that state.’
‘I understand that he had to give the speech at short notice because Sir Nicholas said the TUC were going to make an issue of it.’
‘He made that up. There wasn’t anything in that paper that would have caused a row in the normal course of events. It’s a very uncontroversial area of the department’s work.’
‘I thought that was the case, sir, but it’s useful to have it confirmed.’
‘Clark must have had a brainstorm. Any idiot could see he was jeopardizing his own career, playing a vicious trick like that.’
‘We are still puzzled by his behaviour, sir. I’ve rarely come across a stranger personality. What was your view of him as a human being?—ideologies apart.’
‘My direct contact with him was too limited for me to get beyond my initial dislike for his reserve. They’re not a very warm-blooded lot, these officials, but he was the coldest fish I ever came across. He didn’t seem ever to loosen up. I used to observe him covertly when he attended meetings with Harvey. He sat behind him and, of course, never said anything. Just used to pass Harvey the occasional note; otherwise he just sat there, superciliously. I think the only time I ever saw him smile was when Harvey had fumbled his way through the first part of that disastrous speech. I didn’t know then what he was finding so funny, but I suppose we know now.’
‘But you must have got to know quite a lot about him from Lady Clark?’
‘Eleanor and I talked about all sorts of things, Superintendent, but we kept off the subject of her husband as much as possible. I knew they were unhappy, of course, and she told me how their relationship had changed over the years, but what she needed was to enjoy the time we had together. She was like a kid let out of school. Full of enjoyment of the simplest pleasures. I don’t think she’s had any fun for years.’
‘But she did have a very close relationship with her son, sir.’
‘I don’t know much about that.’ Jenkins was abrupt. ‘He hasn’t been home much during the past few years, so she’d had to learn to do without him most of the time.’
Milton bet that Jenkins was holding out on him about Nigel. Should he probe further? No, it wasn’t worth it. Jenkins would hit the roof if Milton even implied that Nigel was gay, though Milton was morally certain that Lady Clark must have known, and told Jenkins. No, in all decency, that was something to talk to Nigel about first. It was a thin enough motive for murdering his father.
‘You had no reason to suppose that Sir Nicholas knew about you and Lady Clark?’
‘Not until Monday,’ said Jenkins evenly. ‘Then I knew that he did.’
‘What happened, sir?’
‘He caught up with me as we left the conference room and whispered that he wanted to see me in the corridor outside to discuss my seduction of his wife.’
‘What did you say, sir?’
‘What could I say? I was afraid of a public scene if I didn’t agree to talk to him outside. I was just about to go out with him there and then when Alf Shaw called me over. When I looked for him later I couldn’t see him anywhere.’
‘You must have been very disconcerted, sir.’
‘Disconcerted is not the word, Superintendent. I had faced up to the fact that it would probably be very difficult when Eleanor at last told him she was leaving, but I had thought that at least things could be worked out in a reasonably civilized way. I was prepared to resign from the Industry and Government Group to avoid embarrassing him. I didn’t think he really cared about Eleanor, so I hoped we’d get away with it without any great traumas.’
‘How did he seem when he spoke to you, sir?’
‘I find it very difficult to describe, Superintendent. He wasn’t threate
ning or anything—no fisticuffs in prospect. He didn’t even look angry or upset. He almost seemed pleased with himself.’
‘He hadn’t said anything to Lady Clark about you?’
‘No. She’d have told me, of course, as I’d have told her about this if it hadn’t been for the murder. When that happened I decided to keep this quiet for fear of worrying her, though I can’t really see how anyone could think it gives me a motive for murder. Nothing he could have said would have stopped me from taking Eleanor away. I wasn’t afraid of anything worse than embarrassment when I went out to look for him. I was mainly anxious to know how the hell he knew about us.’
‘I can tell you, sir,’ said Milton, and he briefly summarized Ritchie’s role in enlightening Sir Nicholas.
Jenkins seemed amazed. ‘That means he must have been harbouring suspicions beforehand. I can’t imagine how. Eleanor’s very good at hiding her feelings—she’s had plenty of practice at it—and we were always very careful to meet when he was at work or away.’
‘Maybe he paid more attention to her than you supposed.’
‘Maybe he did. Though that doesn’t fit in with the way he treated her. She says that most evenings he didn’t spend more than half an hour with her.’
‘There are many things about Sir Nicholas that are still puzzling me,’ said Milton, ‘and I doubt if we are ever going to understand exactly why he acted as he did in the period leading up to his murder.’
‘Is there anything else you need to know from me, Superintendent?’
‘No, thank you, sir. I won’t take up any more of your time. I’m grateful for your cooperation.’
He seemed to be producing that policeman’s cliché rather often, thought Milton as he left Jenkins. It wasn’t often that suspects spilled the beans with such willingness as most had on this case. Then again, it wasn’t often that policemen were as well briefed as he had been by Amiss. He grinned as he thought about his elegant new recruit to the ranks of coppers’ narks. He was a far cry from Milton’s last experience of that breed—a slimy little creature with a battered dripping nose, an insatiable appetite for ten-pound notes and a line in misleading information which had led Milton to give him up as a bad job. He would be sorry to lose touch with Amiss when this was all over.
He looked at his watch. It was almost five o’clock. Too near rush hour to take a taxi back to the Yard. He’d be better off on the tube. He noticed with grim amusement that a young man standing beside him in the packed carriage was wearing a badge saying ‘Glad to be Gay’. Well, he didn’t suppose Nigel Clark had had reason to be very glad about it. He sure as hell wasn’t going to be glad about anything very much when Milton had finished with him.
Chapter Twenty-five
‘You were less than honest with me this morning, sir.’
Nigel Clark looked as frightened as Milton had hoped he would. ‘I answered all your questions, Superintendent.’
‘You must have known that it was relevant that you had no alibi for the time when your father was killed.’
‘Well, I admit it was a relief that you didn’t say anything about it. I assumed that meant you knew who the murderer was.’
‘You know perfectly well that I wouldn’t have been wasting my time with you if I knew any such thing.’
‘I can’t be expected to know how the police operate,’ replied Clark with a sudden flash of spirit.
‘I am in no mood for silly arguments. I should like your comments on the fact that you had the opportunity to kill your father and that your alibi for the murder of Mrs Bradley is substantiated only by your mother.’
He thought for a moment that this brutality was going to precipitate a breakdown, but Nigel Clark was made of better stuff than that.
‘Why the hell should I kill my father and a woman I had never met before?’ he asked defiantly.
‘Possibly, sir, because your father had found out that you were emotionally involved with Ronald Maitland, and Mrs Bradley had heard you and Sir Nicholas arguing about it before you murdered him.’
That did it. Milton thought for a moment that Nigel was going to be sick. He sat frigid and pale in his chair for several moments and then whispered ‘How did you find out?’
‘I am under no obligation to reveal my sources, sir. You, however, are under an obligation to tell me the truth. I may tell you that your evasiveness has put you in a serious position. I could arrest you immediately on suspicion of both murders if I so chose. I warn you also that I shall check every statement you make with the utmost care. If I find you have told me any lies or have concealed any information relevant to either murder, I shall be obliged to take a most serious view. In your own interests I advise you to tell me honestly about your relationship with your father, particularly in recent weeks, and what occurred when you saw him just before he was murdered.’
Milton was taking a risk. He knew perfectly well that no one would authorize the arrest of Nigel Clark when his alibi for Gladys’s murder was backed up by his mother. At least, not until there was a great deal more to go on than there was at present. Nor was there a shred of positive evidence that Nigel had seen Sir Nicholas that Monday lunchtime. Still, he was in no position to call the bluff of a policeman who had revealed himself to be a tough nut. Milton set his face in what he hoped was a threatening expression and waited.
‘I don’t know where to begin.’
‘Take it chronologically, sir. Tell me about your relationship with your father.’
‘I was sorry for him.’
Milton looked at Nigel blankly. It was the first time he had heard Sir Nicholas represented as an object of pity.
‘Why?’
‘Because I couldn’t love him, I suppose, and I thought he desperately wanted me to.’
‘And why couldn’t you love him?’
‘Because he made me feel a failure. All through my school and university days I felt I was letting him down every time he read a school report or heard the results of one of my exams. He never said much directly when he was upset. He would just retreat to his study for several hours. Then he’d come out and tell me he was going to arrange more private tuition for me since I was obviously being badly taught. I was never any good, though. I could never do more than scrape a pass in the subjects he really cared about and he wasn’t impressed by what I managed to achieve in Maths and Science. He always talked about scientists as if they were some race of illiterate technicians.’
‘I still don’t see why this should have made you sorry for him. Surely you were resentful?’
‘Sometimes I was, but I didn’t think he could help himself. He wanted me to be like him, you see, and I was so different that he was constantly disappointed. I was so nervous of adding to that disappointment by appearing stupid in conversation that I avoided him as much as possible. Sometimes if we were together for a while and I made an excuse to leave he’d say something like “Of course I realize you’ve got better things to do” in a way which made me think he was hurt. But I couldn’t help wanting to get away. I couldn’t cope.’
‘You were close to your mother?’
‘Yes, very. And that made it worse. I think he was upset every time he saw us laughing over something, or talking about some book we had both read. We used to go to the cinema together when I was a kid. He wouldn’t come with us because he despised films, and after a while we didn’t invite him any more. He’d just stay at home by himself. He must have felt that he was an outsider.’
‘Did things improve after you went to university?’
‘No. If anything, they got worse. I rarely brought my friends home because he made them feel so ill-at-ease, and he seemed insulted when I went to stay with them rather than be at home.’
‘It must have been a great strain for you to live in the same house with him.’
‘Yes, it was. I couldn’t wait
to leave, though I was sorry to leave my mother on her own with him.’
Ah, thought Milton. So she didn’t tell him about Jenkins. Or is he covering up? ‘What about your involvement with Ronald Maitland?’
Nigel Clark looked embarrassed. Then he looked Milton straight in the eye. ‘I’m in love with him.’
‘Is this recent?’
‘It’s been going on for about three months. I met him at a disco.’
‘A gay disco?’
‘Yes. I’ve known for three years that I was gay. That was another reason I didn’t want to bring my friends home. I knew what my father thought of people like us.’
‘Did your mother know?’
‘Yes, she did. I told her quite a long time ago, and she has met Ronald. The three of us had lunch together last month when we had decided to live together.’
‘How did she take it?’
‘Very well. Mothers seem to come to terms with it much easier than fathers, if my friends’ experiences are anything to go by. She was really quite relieved about Ronald. She thought I’d be better off settled down. She didn’t like me being promiscuous.’
‘Were you going to tell your father?’
‘No. Mother and I talked about it and decided not to say anything. We thought he might realize it himself eventually. We couldn’t see any point in precipitating a row.’
‘You never suspected he might know what you were? He didn’t remark for instance on the absence of girlfriends?’
‘Well, I used to pretend often that I was going out with a girl when in fact it was a bloke. He never made any comments or asked any questions about my sex life.’
‘When did he tell you that he knew?’ asked Milton, hoping his gamble had paid off.
‘He rang me at the office last Monday morning about 10.30.’
After abandoning poor old Nixon, thought Milton.
‘He said he had heard something very disturbing about my private life and wished to talk to me about it after the meeting. He asked me to come up and wait for him in one of the nearby rooms at about 12.30.’
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