Corpus

by Rory Clements

  Hereward turned to Wilde, as if registering his presence for the first time. ‘Why are you here?’ Hereward had been master of the college when Wilde first arrived. Their relationship had never been warm, but Wilde’s academic rigour, his research credentials and his well-received book on Sir Francis Walsingham’s role in the downfall of Mary Stuart had overridden other concerns.

  ‘I live next door to Lydia.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Never did care for the college life, did you? I’m surprised you’ve stayed on as you dislike our traditions so much.’

  It wasn’t true. Wilde didn’t dislike their traditions; he just wished they’d enter the twentieth century: install proper bathing facilities on every staircase, showers even, make the place less monastic. ‘Lydia has her doubts about your daughter’s death,’ he said, but even as the words emerged from his mouth, he wished they hadn’t. Why add to the man’s misery?

  ‘Of course she has doubts!’ The words exploded from Hereward’s mouth. ‘However far she had fallen, Nancy would never kill herself. Her bloody Bolshie chums did this. They’re monsters.’

  ‘What have the police said to you?’

  ‘They won’t listen. I’ve had a word with the coroner, too, and he’s made up his mind. Won’t even call a jury. He’s having a quick inquest tomorrow, and the verdict will be accidental death. Then she’ll be released for burial. It’s all rot. This bears the hallmarks of the Reds.’

  Wilde looked from Hereward to Lydia and back. Sir Norman’s suspicions were born of simple prejudice: Lydia was haunted by Nancy’s own fears. The same doubts, but different reasons, and neither had any solid evidence to offer the police. As everyone of note in Cambridge would testify, Nancy was a heroin addict; the case was going nowhere. Heroin addicts had a tendency to die young.

  ‘Why would the communists want to kill her?’ Wilde asked.

  Sir Norman looked incredulous. ‘Are you asking me why the Bolsheviks kill people?’

  ‘No. I am asking why they would want to kill your daughter.’

  ‘And I can’t think you’re that naive or ignorant, Wilde. It’s like asking why cats kill mice. Killing is what Stalin’s lot do. It’s the nature of the beast.’

  Wilde said nothing. He wished he hadn’t spoken. It was unseemly to have raised voices in this room. Lydia looked bemused and flustered.

  ‘They feed off each other,’ Hereward continued, undeterred. ‘In their own country – everywhere. They wade in their comrades’ blood to clamber to the top. Even Nancy’s great hero Trotsky is on their death list. They’re all dirty little Jews, you know, all killing each other. They killed Nancy, too. That’s what they do. They beat each other with their hammers and when they grow too tall, they cut them down with their sickles.’

  Wilde bowed his head. He understood why any father might be filled with rage at the death of his daughter, but he had no wish to hear this. Murmuring his excuses, he left Lydia with the man and set off to look round the house.

  First he tried the two downstairs windows, in the front room and the kitchen. The bay window was a sash and had been secured with a latch on the inside. The kitchen window was a metal-framed casement, which had also been shut tight from within. Neither showed any sign of a forced entry. He went upstairs to the bedroom. The corpse was long gone to the mortuary and the bedclothes had been bundled up and dumped on the thin mattress.

  He examined the windows in the three upstairs rooms. There was a bay window in the bedroom, similar to the one directly beneath it, a frosted one in the small bathroom and a tiny one in the lavatory, again frosted. All were closed and showed no signs of having been tampered with.

  Lydia had said that the front door was locked when she arrived and that all the windows had been closed. She also said that the police had told her that Nancy’s key was found on a hook in the kitchen. So if all the windows were shut from the inside, then there could have been no one else involved in her death, unless the perpetrator had a key – either the one from the next-door neighbour, or a third one. It was easy to see why the police had no reason to suspect foul play.

  The bathroom was modest and old. There was an iron bath that would certainly not have been big enough for Wilde without his legs bunched up at the knee, and a small basin on which sat a facecloth, a half-used tin of Gibbs dental cream and a worn toothbrush. On the wall, there was a little medicine cabinet, which he opened: a tin of lavender-scented Yardley talc, some Nivea skin cream, nail-varnish remover, shampoo powder and various other feminine products. The sad leftovers of a young life cut short. Whatever the devastating effects of her heroin habit, Nancy had tried to keep herself properly groomed.

  As he made his way downstairs, he saw that Sir Norman was leaving. His head was down; a broken man. Through the front window, he saw the chauffeur touch his peaked cap, then open the back door of the Rolls Royce.

  By the front door, next to the telephone, which was off the hook, two pairs of shoes were laid out on a copy of the Cambridge Daily News, as though ready for cleaning. Wilde picked them up, examined them, then put them back down. He replaced the telephone receiver.

  ‘How long did she live here, Lydia?’ he called through to the sitting room.

  ‘She moved here in September not long after we came back from Berlin.’ Lydia came out and perched herself on the bottom stair. She was holding the silver-framed picture of Nancy. ‘Things were very strained with her father, as you know. She had to get away from him. I offered her a room – the one Braithwaite’s in now – but she wouldn’t take it.’

  ‘Apart from you, who were her friends?’ Wilde checked himself. ‘More to the point – who were her enemies? Do you believe this was really something to do with her links to the communists?’

  ‘I was perhaps her only real friend, unless you count her political acquaintances . . .’ Lydia looked miserable. ‘But sometimes even I needed a break from her. She could drive people away, you know, but I can’t think of any specific enemies. I suppose she had political adversaries. She could be a bit fervent, a bit unforgiving. To the puritan, all things are impure, as the saying goes. Not that she was a puritan, of course, but the same holds true: she was an idealist. And everyone fell short of her rather rigid ideals of a socialist world.’

  Wilde crouched down beside her. ‘Look, Lydia.’ His voice was kind. ‘The police explanation does seem the most logical, but that phone call to you . . .’ He straightened up. ‘Something was clearly bothering Nancy and it’s bothering you, too. Let’s think about your Berlin trip. If she was there at the behest of someone, what do you think she was doing that she would want to keep secret from you?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think she was an assassin, if that’s what you mean!’

  Wilde smiled. ‘I agree that’s unlikely. Do you think she was a courier, then, taking something to someone – or picking something up? Or perhaps she was spying on something or someone? If – and it is a big if – she was on some sort of a mission to Germany, then someone sent her. Someone in England, perhaps even someone here in Cambridge.’

  Lydia shrugged, but didn’t reply. She turned over Nancy’s photograph and stared at it. ‘Better get this back to Sir Norman. Did you smell his breath, Tom? He’d been drinking.’

  ‘I don’t blame him.’ Sir Norman Hereward had always been a heavy drinker, even back in the days when he was master of the college. Wilde sighed. Lydia was running out of steam. ‘Just one more thing. What about men? You said the neighbour had something to say about that.’

  ‘Ask her – see if you believe her. I don’t.’

  *

  Next door, Mrs Bromley crossed her arms over her bosom as she had done before. ‘This is a sad business and no mistake,’ she said.

  ‘Indeed, Mrs Bromley,’ Wilde said. ‘And I know you have already had quite enough questions from the police. But may I ask one more? You told Miss Morris here that Miss Hereward had entertained various men in her house. When did she have her last visitor?’

  ‘Well, I never saw th
em, of course.’

  Lydia frowned. ‘But you said she had had men here. How can you say that if you hadn’t seen anything?’

  ‘Well, I heard things, didn’t I? Noises through the wall late at night.’

  ‘The wireless for instance?’

  ‘I know what I know.’ Mrs Bromley backed away into the dark hallway of her house, glared at them, then closed the door.

  Lydia’s mouth fell open. ‘What did I say?’

  ‘Come on,’ Wilde said. ‘There’s nothing more for us here.’

  CHAPTER 7

  Leslie Braithwaite spread beef dripping liberally over his thick slice of white bread, then sprinkled salt on it before folding the bread into a malformed sandwich. He thrust it into his gaping mouth, chewing with vigour. Ah, the pleasure. The food of his Yorkshire boyhood. Proper fresh white English bread with a golden crust. The black German stuff wasn’t the same.

  He put up a hand to summon the waitress. ‘Another cup of tea, missus. Make it stewed and strong. This stuff’s like cat’s piss.’

  ‘Language, if you don’t mind.’

  Language. He took another large bite of his sandwich. How about German for a language? Scheisse! All manner of pork sausage in Möhlau, beef dripping too, but you couldn’t get a proper cup of tea for love nor money. Weissbier – wheat beer or fart-beer as he called it – was your lot these days, and you could stick it up the Kaiser’s arse.

  His tea arrived. He spooned in plenty of sugar and stirred it hard, clinking the sides with the spoon and spilling the sweet liquid over the tablecloth. Not that it made much difference; it was already stained with egg yolk, butter, marmalade and dripping. This was a working man’s caff, in a side street, away from the hangouts of the bourgeoisie and the intellectuals who infested this hole of a town. This was where the carters, the bargees, the college servants and the factory hands came for their bacon and eggs and sweet tea.

  The clinking of the spoon. His teeth tightened, those that hadn’t fallen out in the PoW camp. He closed his eyes and the clinking became the rat-a-tat clattering of the machine guns and the spit-spit of the snipers’ bullets, the thunder of the big guns and the volcanoes of mud. The Somme in late autumn 1916, in the rain, holding the line against the Boche. God, the rain that autumn. That’s where it had all started, the road to Möhlau.

  His thoughts turned to his wife and children. One little killing and he would see them again, would slide once more between Gudrun’s fleshy legs.

  He had made his home in Germany because of Gudrun, and then he had rejoiced as it regained its pride with the rise of the National Socialists. Adolf Hitler had done this, through willpower alone. He had kept his promise of providing bread and work for the common man.

  One little killing, Braithwaite owed them that much.

  He fished some worn coppers from his ragged pocket. A penny with the face of Victoria almost rubbed smooth, two George V halfpennies and a shiny new silver threepenny piece.

  ‘How much, love?’

  ‘Tuppence to you.’

  ‘How about you make it a penny halfpenny? How about you and me, out back, for another penny halfpenny? Been on the road for weeks, I have. Haven’t seen my family in an age.’ Didn’t tell her that his wife was German, that he lived in Germany. Didn’t tell her that he’d only been back in England ten days, that he’d landed at Harwich. As far as this town was concerned, he was English and communist. That was the way he had been told it had to be, and it was easy enough to remember.

  ‘Tuppence. And you can take your filthy language with you.’

  He put two fingers in the air, handed over the small coins and put the threepence back in his pocket. Stuffing the last of his plug of chewing tobacco into his mouth, he walked out into the dull December rain.

  Across the road, there was a telephone kiosk with a queue of three people outside. He checked his cheap pocket watch. It was five to twelve. Five minutes to go. God forbid those queuing were windbags. Might have to use his elbows. He joined the line, his cap down over his brow, his hands deep in his pockets. Clutched in one of his buried hands was a precious slip of paper; it bore the telephone number of a Mayfair hotel.

  *

  ‘What now, Tom?’

  ‘Lydia, I understand your suspicions, but it is hard to conclude from them that this is murder. One can only go on the evidence. You can see that, surely? We have to leave it to the police and coroner – and we know what they’ll say.’

  They had ridden back to the college and were now in his rooms. Bobby had stoked up the fire and brought them lunch from Hall, some sort of meat pie with boiled potatoes, gravy and peas. Neither of them had had the appetite to finish it. Now they were drinking tea in front of the hearth.

  ‘She wasn’t the suicidal type,’ Lydia said.

  ‘Then it was an accidental overdose.’

  ‘People have the wrong idea about her,’ Lydia said fiercely. ‘It simply wasn’t like her. The whole heroin thing was a phase. It would have ended sooner rather than later. She liked to shock people. She always did. That’s how it all went wrong when, you know . . . the incident.’

  ‘Ah yes, the incident.’ He stressed the noun with the gravity that might be reserved for the sinking of the Lusitania. The scandal. It had been the talk of the whole university and had brought an early end to Sir Norman’s illustrious career as college master. Nancy, having left Girton some four years earlier, had been living with her father in the master’s lodge at the time. Their relationship had never been easy, but she had needed to get away from London. It was rumoured that she had been having an affair with a Labour member of parliament and his wife had found out and was threatening a messy divorce. The MP had taken the line of least resistance and sent Nancy packing. She needed to get away from the capital and all the people they had known, and so, with some reluctance, she had asked her father to allow her to stay with him in the lodge. It might have been better if she had gone to his country house nearby, but it was rented out while Sir Norman served as master. With deep reservations of his own, he had agreed to let her stay in college. A good-looking, somewhat wild, young woman among a couple of hundred men was a recipe for disaster.

  ‘It was the bedder that did the dirty on them apparently,’ Wilde said. ‘Caught them in flagrante and made a formal complaint.’

  ‘Those stupid women act like some sort of morality police reporting to the Inquisition,’ Lydia said bitterly.

  He laughed. ‘Some do. Others are more obliging.’ Nancy had been caught in bed with two undergraduates, both of whom had been sent down. ‘Anyway, it was all a fuss about nothing. Who in God’s name was hurt by a little sexual congress? Mind you, I don’t suppose the reaction would have been any different at Girton.’

  ‘Girton was like the Tower of London when we were there – I’m sure it still is. Suited some of the Sapphists, of course, including a few of the lecturers. No man would have got in there, although I must say we were quite adept at getting out.’ Lydia sighed, got to her feet and walked over to the window. ‘God, I hate this time of year. It’ll be dark soon.’

  Wilde stood up. ‘Look, I’m bored silly with college matters, so to put your mind at rest I’m going to ride out to St Wilfred’s Priory to have another word with Hereward. I can take his picture back. Let’s see if he really does have a reason for believing there’s something more to Nancy’s death.’ He paused. ‘By the way, I take with a pinch of salt what Mrs Bromley had to say, but was there a man in her life?’

  ‘Nothing serious, I don’t think. But you could never be sure what Nancy was up to from one week to the next.’

  ‘She was an attractive woman.’

  ‘I sometimes wondered . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, you know, there were men, but it occurred to me that she wasn’t too choosy. Boys, girls, I think it was much of a muchness to her. When we were in Berlin, she sort of tried it on with me after a few glasses of wine. It was the night after we had our shopping trip. The one I
told you about, when I was going frantic because she went missing. Anyway, we were sharing a room and she crawled into bed with me during the night.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, of course, I didn’t have the heart to push her out, so well we, you know . . .’

  She gave him a wan smile. He said nothing, raised an eyebrow at her sad little jest.

  ‘All right, all right. I had to tell her it wasn’t me. She called me a bourgeois tart.’

  ‘Fair enough description.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Professor Wilde. Anyway, she called everyone bourgeois.’

  ‘And tart?’

  ‘A private joke. She knew all my secrets, you see. The problem is, I obviously didn’t know all of hers.’

  Wilde recalled seeing her across the college courts. He hadn’t known her well, but there had been something in the way Nancy Hereward moved. He could imagine that men – and some women – would have found her difficult to resist.

  Lydia hugged her arms around her chest, as she stared out into the gathering darkness. ‘I’ve got to do some work, Tom. I have a deadline to meet, but all I want to do is go home, go to bed and bury my head beneath the covers.’

  ‘What would Nancy say?’

  ‘You know what she’d say.’

  ‘Well, listen to yourself – and to her. Go to work. Keep yourself occupied. I’ll ride out to St Wilfred’s Priory alone.’

  ‘I take it you know about Nancy’s mother?’

  ‘I thought the old man was a widower.’ Like me, he thought. What a strange word, widower.

  ‘He is. But I mean the circumstances of his wife’s death. I think Nancy’s mother killed herself.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Something Nancy said once. She said her mother never recovered from the deaths of her sons in the war. Can suicide run in families? It would certainly reinforce those who think Nancy killed herself.’

  Wilde rather thought that the children of suicides could well become obsessed with the subject. ‘I’ll keep an open mind and do a little inquiring for you. Perhaps I’ll talk to one or two of her friends. Any names you can think of?’