Brock smiled his quick smile, which seemed to alter the whole set of his large face. ‘You know far more than me about courtroom evidence, sir, but I’ll stick my neck out and say I know a bit more about what kind of evidence is necessary to get someone to that courtroom. D’you know of anyone who hated Corry?’
The telephone sounded once, which was Holter’s signal. He picked up the receiver. ‘Yes?’
‘Radwick, what’s happened?’ asked Charlotte, almost breathlessly.
He frowned slightly. ‘How d’you mean, dear? What’s happened where?’
‘What’s going on in chambers? What are the police doing? Please, you’ve got to tell me.’
‘There’s been an unfortunate incident and the police are making the usual kind of inquiries. There’s absolutely no need to worry, my pet.’
‘But what kind of incident?’
‘Traynton found a dead man in my room this morning.’
‘Radwick, please come home to lunch. You must come back.’
‘But I’ve a great deal of work ...’
‘Never mind that. You’ve got to come.’ There was a short pause and when she spoke again her voice was calmer. ‘I want you here so much, darling, so that I can ... can apologise for being funny last night.’
He tapped the desk with his fingers. He preferred not to be reminded about last night when his wife had, quite out of the blue, acted as if he were a leper. It was not as though he were always making demands on her, like some men did: nor did it as often go wrong because he was tired as she had tried to make out. Still, if she realized now that she had been overwrought and wanted to apologize ...
‘You will come, my darling, won’t you?’ she said softly, before cutting the connection.
He replaced the receiver.
‘I won’t keep you a couple of minutes more, sir,’ said Brock.
‘What makes you think you’re going to keep me at all?’ he answered, as he wondered what kind of a mood she’d be in when he arrived home.
‘I’m sure you’ll just help us. Squire, get the stuff ready, will you?’
Squire, who had been standing throughout the meeting, opened the small plastic zip case he had been carrying and took from it a tube that looked very much like a large toothpaste tube, together with several paper handkerchiefs. He put the tube on the desk. ‘Shove it on as if it were handcream,’ he said.
‘I do not use handcream,’ snapped Holter.
Brock stood up, picked up the tube and unscrewed the top. He walked round to the right of Holter. ‘Just put your hands out, will you?’ Holter looked as though he might refuse, but then he slowly did as requested. Brock squeezed out a wavy six inch line of light green jelly on to Holter’s right hand. ‘If you’ll work it very well in, sir.’
Holter rubbed his hands together.
Brock continued speaking. ‘I wonder if you’ve any idea of the time when you and Mr Corry left these chambers last night, sir?’
‘A little after six. I can’t give it any more exactly than that.’
‘And you went home?’
‘No, I didn’t. I was speaking at the CA Harper society dinner on the hidden dangers of delegated legislation and extra-judicial courts.’
‘But I suppose you went straight to wherever the dinner was held?’ Brock watched the jelly on Holter’s hands. It had not changed colour.
‘It was at The Three Bells and the quality of the meal was so bad that if I’d been running the society I would have complained most strongly. No, I did not go straight there. I went for a walk in the public gardens to consider the implications of my consultation with Corry. Would you also like to know how many times I blew my nose between then and going to bed?’
‘You can tell me if you like, sir. It might come in handy.’ Brock turned and spoke to the detective constable. ‘Squire, pass Mr Holter a couple of those paper handkerchiefs so he can wipe the muck off.’
The handkerchiefs were given to him and Holter cleaned his hands. ‘Are you satisfied my hands are now not only clean, but clear?’ he asked, with forced sarcasm.
‘Quite satisfied, sir.’ Then Brock added, as if an amused afterthought: ‘Though if you had fired the gun and then washed your hands several times, especially with a detergent, we wouldn’t find any trace now.’
Holter picked up his brief.
Brock spoke casually. ‘When was the last time you had a lady in your room, sir?’
‘What the devil d’you mean by that?’
‘Nothing suggestive.’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Would it be recently?’
‘No.’
‘Just one more small point. How did you get that bruise on your neck?’
Holter flushed. ‘Mind your own bloody business,’ he snapped, as he marched out of the room.
Brock yawned. ‘Let’s go. Squire. I wouldn’t say no, myself, to a bite at the local.’
Squire scrumpled up the two used paper handkerchiefs and threw them into the half-full waste-paper basket. ‘Someone told me he was a ripe old bastard. Now I know they weren’t exaggerating.’
‘His description lies in the eyes of his beholders. Some of the old lags he’s got off wouldn’t agree with you.’ As Brock yawned again and stretched, his well worn coat strained at the shoulders. ‘I wonder why his wife’s so worried?’
*
Holter drove at eighty on the main road and slowed to sixty in the lanes, where forty was the maximum safe speed. He liked the country without ever suffering the land hunger which always attacked a real countryman. He lived out of Hertonhurst because that was a smarter thing to do than to live in the town, which was being ruined by speculative building.
As he drove through the village of Crighton, he raised a hand in a quick wave to the local publican, then almost immediately did the same to the rotund farmer from whom they bought all their cream. Although he would never have admitted it even to himself, he liked to think he was the squire, driving through his village. Sometimes, as the Bentley purred past the local villagers, he deliberately recalled how his father, before the First World War, had touched his forelock to the doctor, the parson, and the gentry from the big house.
He reached the drive of Treybrake Hall and turned into it. The gardener, mowing the front lawn, ignored the car completely, not even pausing to look at it. He was a surly man whom Holter would have sacked some time ago if there had been the chance of replacing him, but good gardeners were just as scarce here as everywhere else. The garden was a large one and Holter liked to open it to the public twice a year in aid of the Distressed Gentlefolk’s Aid Association: without a gardener he would never have done this because he would have been ashamed had anything been less than perfect.
He parked in front of the massive porch and went through the open doorway into the house. Agnes Utley, a woman of fifty who came every week-day to do the housework, wished him good morning as she walked out of the dining-room. He asked her where Mrs Holter was and she told him in the drawing-room.
The drawing-room, to the right of the hall, was the best room from which to look at the view. The land, mostly woods, sloped down to the Romney Marsh and a headland cut out the obscene super-pylons which had been built without any regard for natural beauty. In spring, one could see the bulb-growing areas which became distant patch-works of colours.
Holter had commissioned a very well known interior decorator to decorate the house. This man was extremely precious by nature and he prided himself on being very, very expressive in his work. Ignoring the obvious, which was to treat the house with a traditional reverence and so enhance the beautiful Queen Anne architecture, he had throughout made use of brilliant and contrasting colours. The drawing-room looked as if it had been splattered by a exploding box of paints.
Holter found Charlotte drinking, which irritated him because of his old-fashioned and irrational dislike of seeing people drink on their own. ‘Now what’s all the trouble, Betty?’
She looked at him, her boldly made-up
and beautiful face showing signs of worry and strain. ‘Radwick, I’ve been so worried.’
He crossed to the cocktail cabinet and poured himself out a whisky and soda. ‘Why?’
‘Please, Radwick, come and sit down here with me on the sofa so that I can be near you.’
He had intended to be pleasant but somewhat distant, thereby showing how hurt he had been by her behaviour the previous night. Now, however, as he looked at her, leaning forward so that her low cut dress fell open, he was swept by a familiar emotion and longing which set up a thumping at the base of his neck and dried his mouth. He sat down on the settee.
She took hold of his free hand in hers. ‘Oh, Raddy, without you here to help me I’ve been all weepy.’
He drank quickly. Just the touch of her hand filled his mind with aching desires. He silently cursed her for having this effect and robbing him of his anger.
‘Radwick, darling. I’ve been desperate to say how sorry I was for last night. I know I got cross with you, and it was all my fault.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘But it does matter, most desperately. I was so terribly tired. Can you forgive me, Radwick? Will you forgive me?’ She leaned against him and kissed his neck, using her tongue, then whispered: ‘I’ve been nearly out of my mind with worry. Someone told me something terrible had happened at your chambers and I kept thinking it might be you and that made me hysterical. My love, I can’t even think of you cutting your finger without feeling as if I’d been twisted up inside.’
‘You silly. You mustn’t be like that.’
She moved even closer to him, after bringing his right arm round her waist. To him, it was pure chance that his right hand cupped her breast. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked.
Her breast filled his hand. When he spoke, his voice was thick. ‘A man called Corry was found dead in my room. He’d been shot.’ He drank.
‘But who’s Corry?’
‘A solicitor.’
‘Oh, Radwick, suppose it had been you! Thank goodness I don’t know him — that would have been so terrible.’
‘You’ve met him. Tall and broad shouldered and over-polite to all ladies.’
‘I’m sure I’ve never met him.’
‘Of course you have. I had to introduce you to him at Mrs Topham’s cocktail party. You said afterwards that he was so smooth he reminded you of a snake.’
‘I ... Yes, now I think I do remember him. But how did he get shot in your room?’
‘The police haven’t any idea.’
‘I suppose it was an accident?’
‘It must have been,’ he answered uncertainly, remembering certain circumstances which seemed to militate against such a solution. His voice quickened. ‘Whatever it was, he’s made a blasted nuisance of himself. Police all over the place, not allowed into my own room, and that’s when I’ve enough work for six men.’
‘Was there ... Do the police think anyone was with him at the time?’
‘Damned if I know.’
‘The police haven’t said anything?’
‘Nothing other than an impertinent question as to when I last had a woman in my room.’ He felt her start. ‘What’s the matter, love?’
‘I’ve just been bitten by something.’
‘Where?’
‘Right up on my leg.’ She drew up her skirt. ‘Can you see anything?’
He pretended to look and after a few seconds she giggled. ‘Darling, you’re much too hungry! No, Radwick, you mustn’t, or I shan’t be in a fit state to eat anything. You’re as bad as a boy of twenty.’ Very gently, she drew his hand away and replaced her skirt.
He finished his drink. It was amusing, now, to remember what Brendon Feeney had said to him just before his marriage to Charlotte. Brendon was the first friend he had made after coming south to Hertonhurst. Brendon, embarrassed but determined to say what he thought he ought to, had talked wildly about the dangers of a man of fifty four marrying a girl of twenty-two. Brendon had repeated all the ancient, traditional, and ridiculous objections to such a disparity of ages and had finally gone so far as to suggest that although he was getting married with his eyes shut, Charlotte’s were wide open and firmly fixed on his income. Brendon and he had hardly spoken to each other since then and now he was sorry for that because he would have liked to ask Brendon whether the success of a marriage between different age-groups didn’t obviously depend on the people concerned and not on a whole series of platitudinous objections. He loved Charlotte and she so clearly loved him just as passionately. Their age difference meant nothing, had no significance. She had married him because of what he was and not for his wealth. To be utterly frank, there had been times when there was some slight temporary trouble between them, but what marriage escaped these trivia no matter what were the partners’ ages?
‘A penny for your thoughts?’ she whispered.
‘How very, very much I love you.’
‘Radwick, you’re so wonderful to me, even though all I seem to be able to do is to behave like last night. But I was so tired and I had a headache and when you kept wanting to play ding-a-ling I lost my temper. I kept hating myself this morning when I remembered how I’d hit you. Did I hurt you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘But there’s a bruise on your neck. I’m going to kiss it to take all the hurt away. Radwick, please never, never let me go. I couldn’t bear to be without you.’
A surge of deep emotion made his eyes prickle. He had found perfect success both in his career and his marriage. No man could ask for more than he had.
‘Tell me exactly how much you love me, Radwick?’
There was a knock on the door and they drew apart. She adjusted her dress. ‘Yes?’ she called out.
‘Lunch is ready,’ said Agnes Utley from outside.
‘Thank you.’ Charlotte lowered her voice. ‘D’you forgive me, Radwick?’
‘For anything and everything.’
They stood up.
She put her arm round his waist, or as far round his comfortable middle-aged waist as she could reach. ‘Darling ...’ She hesitated, then finished speaking with a rush of words. ‘Why did the police ask you when a woman had last been in your room in chambers?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ he replied uninterestedly.
Chapter Six
WHILE UNIFORMED men and two detective constables inquired into Corry’s home life, Brock returned to chambers after a quick lunch at the nearest public house in the High Street. He never liked to be far away from the scene of the crime at the beginning of investigations because he tried, as he put it, to soak up the atmosphere, the circumstances, and the personalities. A lecturing detective superintendent at Kirkton College, where he had taken the sergeant’s course, had said: ‘All crimes are governed by personalities.’ As with all generalisations, this was far too facile a simplification, but even so, there was a great deal of truth in it. He thought about the personalities as he at present saw them — Holter, so very sure of himself in most ways but probably unsure of himself when he considered his standing in the world, bombastic, impatient with others, apparently unconcerned with the tragedy of a murder: Resse, coldly cynical even with regard to himself: Aiden, an exuberant, extrovert young man: Traynton, a ponderous, but immensely self-satisfied refugee from a bygone age: Marriott, too smartly smart, contemptuous of anything but financial success: and Joan Fleming, every ready to say she was married, as if not to spread temptation before others. Those, and Spender who was away for the day, were the personalities in the case.
He crossed the road and walked into Awcott House. At the head of the stairs were three reporters who surrounded him and demanded a statement and he replied that as soon as possible a news conference would be called, but until then nothing could be said. He refused their continued pleas for some form of concrete news, but did so in a way that left them bearing him no ill will.
He entered chambers and went through to the clerks’ room. Only Marriott was there.
�
��It’s a warm day,’ said Brock, as he moved one of the wooden chairs and sat down on it. He looked up at the dusty photographs on the wall of men in full-bottom wigs. ‘When it gets this warm I have difficulty in thinking of anything but cool seas and bikinis.’
‘You go for bikinis, do you?’ replied Marriott, as he stubbed out the cigarette he had been smoking.
‘Show me the man who doesn’t and I’ll prescribe a psychiatrist,’ replied Brock equably. ‘When’s Mr Spender due back?’
‘He might look in tonight, or he might not.’
‘Someone said he’s on a case?’
‘We’re defending a man who crashed into a stationary police car.’
‘Now there’s a damn’ silly thing to do! Is Spender a nice bloke?’
Marriott picked up a packet of cigarettes and, after a slight pause, offered it before helping himself to one. ‘He’s all right. Makes more money than Mr Resse, anyway.’
Brock struck a match and leaned forward to offer the light. ‘Yet Resse is the older man. I’d have thought he was doing quite well?’
‘Him?’ Marriott spoke scornfully. ‘He’d make a better living driving the corporation dust-cart. I’ll tell you straight, his briefs come in here marked in fives and sevens. A man like him ought to be getting near the hundreds as often as not. He’s no bloody good in court. I could do better than he does.’
‘I wonder you haven’t tried, then?’
Marriott looked quickly at the detective, but seeing only the same bland expression he took no notice of the remark. ‘He got a lot of work from Corry.’
‘Did he?’
‘But Corry didn’t like paying up what was owing. Did you know that a barrister can’t sue a solicitor for his fees?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘It’s some goddamn, stupid rule from the Middle Ages, like the rest of the law. Corry owed him something well over two hundred quid and Mr Resse was always on to Old Misery — that’s Traynton — to try to shake it out of Corry.’
‘But he didn’t succeed?’
‘Not recently. As a matter of fact ...’ Marriott trailed off into silence.
Dead Against the Lawyers Page 5
