Visibility

by Boris Starling

  “Good,” she said, taking his elbow and giving it a quick squeeze. “Maybe you give me your name, too.”

  “Oh.” He laughed. “My name is Herbert.”

  The fog seemed to be congealing by the hour. It was also becoming appreciably more noxious. By the time he and Elkington reached King’s, Herbert’s throat felt as though someone had scoured it with bleach. He hawked hard to clear the taste, and found that what came up was laced with black streaks.

  If the fog was having that effect on him, Herbert thought with a shudder, imagine what it was doing to his mother’s elderly, asthmatic, bronchitic pair of bellows.

  King’s was nestled between the Strand and the Thames, tucked up next to Somerset House in the lee of Waterloo Bridge. At the main entrance, Herbert and Elkington paused to let a crocodile of schoolchildren past. The boys were wearing shorts, even in this savage cold; long trousers were as infallible a sign of adolescence as a broken voice. A couple of lads clutched Eagle comics, the covers screaming paeans for Dan Dare. One of the girls was carrying a copy of Girl magazine.

  Herbert had heard of neither; the language of children was not his.

  There were teachers at either end of the line and in the middle, all very young and looking understandably anxious at being unable to see more than half their charges at once.

  Inside the main entrance of King’s was a small office, and here they found a porter who was at least as old as God, and quite possibly older. He was huddled next to a two-bar electric fire, reading the Daily Express. He was holding the pages so close both to his face and to the fire that at any moment Herbert expected man and journal to go up in flames.

  “Terribly sorry, sir,” the porter said, standing up and putting the paper away in one movement, like a schoolboy caught with contraband. “Didn’t see you there.”

  Herbert flipped his warrant card. “Detective Inspector Smith, New Scotland Yard.”

  The porter practically snapped to attention.

  “And Sergeant Elkington, Hyde Park,” Elkington said.

  The porter glanced at him, instantly calculated who fitted where on the food chain, and turned back to Herbert. “What can I do you for, sir?”

  “You can tell me who works in Max Stensness’ department.”

  “Certainly, sir. Mr. Stensness works…” The porter held the last word a fraction longer than necessary, watching for Herbert’s reaction, waiting to see if he had got his tenses right. When Herbert gave him nothing back, he went uncertainly on: “He works with Dr. Wilkins and Dr. Franklin.”

  “And where would I find them?”

  “You go out of the door here, turn left, first right, second door on the right, down three flights of stairs, take the fourth set of swing doors, and follow the signs which say ‘Biophysics’ and ‘Medical Research Council.’”

  Herbert nodded his thanks.

  He and Elkington left the porter’s office and followed the directions, soon finding, with a grim sense of inevitability, that they were lost.

  The only people they could see were a pair of men in white coats who, even at ten paces, smelt strongly, and somewhat incongruously, of fish.

  Herbert approached them and said, more in hope than expectation, “I’m looking for Dr. Franklin and Dr. Wilkins.”

  “Sure,” said one of them. “I’m going that way myself; I’ll show you.”

  Up close, the smell of fish was all but overpowering. As they walked, the man saw Herbert sniff in surprise, and laughed. “Oh, don’t mind me. Too much cod roe, that’s the problem. There’s no showers here, so when they overdo the roe, me and Geoff end up stinking like a couple of Billingsgate porters.”

  “What on earth do you use the roe for?” Herbert asked.

  “It’s those lot in the lab where you’re going; they use it, not me. Something to do with their experiments. They did try to explain it to me once, but they might as well have been talking Greek, for all the sense it made. Sometimes they want roe, sometimes it’s meat from Smithfields: calf glands, you know, the ones butchers sell as sweetbreads. We were there this morning—Smithfields. Awful, it is, this fog; there’s cattle there for the show and they’re dropping like flies. Lovely beasts, too: Red Polls, Galloways, Lincoln Reds, Shorthorns, all so fattened up they can hardly breathe, just like humans can’t if they’re too porky—no offense, if there are any bloaters in your family. They were giving the animals whiskey, you know, to keep their airways open. Whatever works, I s’pose. Poor things.”

  He opened a pair of swing doors, and ushered Herbert and Elkington into a small laboratory. It was spotlessly clean; they must have been too far below-ground for the fog to have penetrated from outside.

  A workbench cluttered with apparatus ran along the two walls to their left. The third wall, across the other side of the room, gave on to an even smaller storeroom. The fourth wall had a tiny window looking onto a light well; not that there was much light today.

  A man and a woman, both wearing white laboratory coats which made them look like doctors or cricket umpires—or fish-bearing university technicians, come to think of it—were standing in the middle of the room.

  The woman was in her early thirties, and she was not conventionally pretty—her face lacked a certain definition, and she had a pronounced widow’s peak—but her figure was trim, and her dark eyes were steadily watchful. The man was perhaps a few years older, with large square glasses perched on a prominent nose and a weak chin which receded apologetically into his neck. They were arguing.

  “All I’m saying, Rosie—” the man said, with a tinge of old maid peevishness.

  “Rosalind,” she said. Ros-lind; two clipped syllables. “Not Rosie.”

  “All I’m saying, Rosalind, is that you might consider sharing your research like everyone else.”

  “And what I’m saying, Maurice,” she snapped back, “is that there’s a convention in science: when you’ve done a lot of work and got some experimental data, you should have the first chance of interpreting it.”

  “Rosalind, I am your superior, and—”

  “You are not my superior!”

  “I’m senior to you.”

  “That doesn’t make you superior. When it comes to X-rays, in fact, you’re a positive amateur.”

  Maurice mumbled something, took off his glasses as though he did not wish to see too much, and turned half away, evidently fatigued by the very confrontation which seemed to energize Rosalind so.

  The fish man turned to Herbert. “Doctors Franklin and Wilkins. At each other’s throats, as usual.”

  He disappeared back into the corridor.

  Herbert stepped towards the warring scientists. He introduced first himself and then Elkington, if only to stop the wretched man butting in again. Rosalind Franklin, Maurice Wilkins. How do you do, nice to meet you, what terrible weather … And an instant, mutual stiffening when Herbert revealed his provenance. Policemen seldom ventured into the bowels of the science department, and their presence was rarely a harbinger of good news.

  “I think you’d better sit down,” Herbert said.

  Wilkins subsided into the nearest seat, an upright wooden chair which backed onto the workbench. Rosalind tipped her head back slightly, an infinitesimal movement which only someone like Herbert, accustomed to and experienced in watching people, would have noticed.

  “I prefer to stand,” she said.

  “You know Max Stensness?” Herbert asked.

  “I do.” Rosalind’s voice seemed a fraction louder than the norm, as though she were taking marriage vows.

  Wilkins nodded his assent.

  “He was found drowned in the Long Water last night.”

  “Dear God,” Wilkins said.

  Rosalind’s mouth formed a perfect “O,” visible for the split second before she clapped her hand to it.

  “Would you excuse me?” she said, and walked quickly from the room.

  Herbert looked at Wilkins, who stared blankly back. Rendered speechless by shock, Herbert thought;
perhaps, more accurately, by the introduction of disorder into a world where order was all.

  Herbert heard a muffled sob from outside, followed by the unmistakable hoot of a nose being blown; then Rosalind was back in the room, eyes slightly reddened but otherwise in control. Herbert had a feeling that he had seen all the emotion she would display today.

  “Drowned?” Rosalind said. “Impossible.”

  “Why so?”

  “Max hated water, absolutely hated it. He couldn’t swim a stroke.”

  No wonder Stensness had ripped at his coat, Herbert thought. No wonder, too, that the autopsy had shown such elevated levels of serotonin and histamine. Being in the water would have been torture enough.

  “Dead? He can’t be,” Wilkins said vaguely.

  “Well, he clearly is, Maurice,” Rosalind snapped, “or else the inspector wouldn’t have come here.” She turned to Herbert. “So how can we help you?”

  “What was it that Max did here?”

  “He’s an assistant,” Wilkins said.

  “He was my assistant,” Rosalind added, to clarify. She had got the tense right first time, Herbert noticed; incredibly rare, when dealing with people who had just been told that someone they knew was dead. He addressed himself to her.

  “Which entailed what?”

  “Helping me with my experiments, collating data, collaborating on reports.”

  “In what areas?”

  “Crystallography, mainly.”

  “And what were his qualifications for this?”

  “He was a doctoral student. Studied at the University College Medical School.”

  “The Ph.D. slave boy handed over in chains,” Wilkins said.

  “Were you friends, or colleagues?” Herbert asked.

  “Does there have to be a difference?” Rosalind replied.

  “There doesn’t have to be, but there often is.”

  Rosalind pondered this. “I liked Max, if that’s what you mean,” she said at length.

  “Did you ever see him outside work?”

  “I had him round to dinner a couple of times.”

  “And you, Dr. Wilkins?”

  “No, no—she’s never invited me.”

  “No; did you ever see Max outside work?”

  “Oh. No. He works much more with Dr. Franklin than with me.”

  That distinction, Herbert felt, covered a multitude of divisions between them.

  He turned back to Rosalind. “How much did you know about his private life?”

  “Very little.”

  “Anything about his romantic life, for instance?”

  “There’s a reason why private lives are called private, Inspector. I didn’t pry.”

  “All right. You say you had him round for dinner; did he ever reciprocate?”

  “Just last week. He’d moved house a few days before, up to Highgate. A few of us went round as a sort of housewarming.”

  “Did he live alone?”

  “No. He had two flatmates.”

  “Do you know their names?”

  “Er … Stephen is one, I think. The other … Noel? Nick? Something like that.”

  “Family?”

  “Sir James and Lady Clarissa.”

  Herbert stifled a sigh. Knighthoods meant Establishment, and Establishment, more often than not, meant connections, and pressure, and trouble. He turned to Elkington.

  “Elkington, go find a copy of Who’s Who, will you?”

  Elkington nodded and hurried off, delighted to be of service. Herbert turned back to Rosalind.

  “And when did you last see him?”

  “Yesterday afternoon. Around five o’clock.”

  “Here?”

  “No. At a conference.”

  “You, too, Dr. Wilkins?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “What was the conference about?”

  Rosalind reached down to the workbench, picked up a pamphlet, and handed it to Herbert. He read the front page.

  THE LONDON BIOCHEMICAL CONFERENCE THURSDAY, 4TH DECEMBER 1952

  Held under the joint auspices of the Royal Society

  and the International Congress of Biochemistry

  (Hon. Chairman: L. C. Pauling)

  THE ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL, LONDON S.E.

  Herbert remembered the Royal Festival Hall from the previous year’s Festival of Britain, with its Skylon and its Dome of Discovery; ostensibly harbingers of a new age of scientific progress, but with rationing higher than it had been during the war and the conflict in Korea at its height, the Festival had felt less like a genuine national celebration than a lollipop jammed in Britain’s mouth to keep the grumblers quiet.

  Shame the conference hadn’t taken place today; the Hall had been the first building in the country to have air-conditioning integrated into its construction, and with that air being washed and filtered however many times an hour, it was probably the only genuinely fog-proof place in London.

  “What was he doing when you saw him?”

  “Eating.”

  “Tea?”

  “Leftovers. He said he hadn’t had time for lunch.”

  “Do you remember what he was eating?”

  “Shepherd’s pie, I think.”

  “You’re very observant.”

  “It’s my job to be.”

  Five o’clock, Herbert thought. Stensness had been found dead at eight, possibly killed as early as half past six, according to Rathbone’s calculations. Whatever he had done in the intervening period, it could not have been much.

  The library was not far away, for Elkington was back with Who’s Who within minutes, his thumb marking the page featuring Sir James Stensness.

  Herbert laid the tome flat on a table and skimmed the entry for Stensness Sr.

  Sir James’ gong had come, like so many, after a lifetime in Whitehall playing dresser to an ever-changing cast of ministers: private secretary and undersecretary at the Ministry of Education, deputy secretary at the Ministry of Public Buildings Works, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Supply during the war, and then at the Board of Trade, his last stop before retirement. Educated at Charterhouse and Brasenose; married Clarissa Carter; one son, Maximilian Aloysius; a member of the Travelers’ Club; a keen racquets player; and an address in Kensington.

  “Is there a phone anywhere?” Herbert asked.

  “Down the hall, third office on the left,” Rosalind said.

  Herbert beckoned to Elkington, and together they found the office and the phone. Herbert dialed the Yard.

  “Murder Squad.” It was Tyce, the senior officer.

  “Smith here. I’ve got the dead man’s name: Max Stensness. And listen, I don’t know what Tulloch’s told you, but Stensness’ father is Sir James; quite a senior mandarin, by the look of things.”

  “I don’t give a stuff if his father’s the king of Siam.” If there was ever a serious republican movement in the country, Tyce would be at the vanguard, Herbert thought.

  “I could really do with someone else to help me on this.”

  “Smith, I haven’t suddenly magicked a squadron of detectives into existence. We’re as stretched now as we were last night. Get some of the bods from Hyde Park to do your legwork.”

  Herbert looked at Elkington. “That’s what I’m doing.”

  “Good. Keep me posted.”

  Tyce was as curt as Tulloch, but without the latter’s vengeful bile. It was not that Tyce actively disliked Herbert; more that he regarded him as being on some sort of eternal probation, where every case was a test not only of his skills but of his character. If he was to impress Tyce enough, Herbert thought, he would be in.

  There were several aspects of his job that Herbert found objectionable. Autopsies were fairly vile; most murderers were hardly charm personified; and there was the nagging sense that, however well he did his job, it would never be enough, because he was primarily trying to find culprits of crimes already committed rather than stopping future offenses.

  As far as Herbert wa
s concerned, however, all these paled into insignificance when set against the one thing he truly hated having to do: breaking the news of a murder to the victim’s family.

  There was no easy way; the only easy way was not to do it in the first place.

  One had to judge pretty much instantaneously the type of people one was dealing with: those who needed soft-soaping and a long lead-in to the dreadful news, or those who appreciated it when one spoke plainly and got straight to the point. Even when one got it right, of course, one still had to deal with the initial blast of shock and anger, as often as not directed straight at the messenger himself.

  Herbert could have sent Elkington, of course—if the man really wanted to join the Murder Squad, then this was where his apprenticeship started—but that would have been to shirk his own duty.

  So instead he had sent Elkington up to Max’s home in Highgate—43 Cholmeley Crescent—with instructions to secure the place and see if he could find anything which might pertain to the murder. Herbert would join him there when he had finished with Sir James and Lady Clarissa.

  They lived in Edwardes Square, a tall, thin house with a pub on one side and rather pretty communal gardens across the road. As a detective, Herbert was not in uniform, but Sir James knew there was trouble the moment he opened the door; his antennae for danger had doubtless been honed to perfection by years in the corridors of power.

  “Yes?” he said, eyebrows curling up on themselves in suspicion.

  Herbert introduced himself and asked if he could come in.

  Sir James paused for half a beat—Herbert wondered whether he was going to ask him to use the tradesmen’s entrance—before taking a pace backwards and allowing Herbert through.

  They went straight into the study; no offer of tea, no sign of Lady Clarissa, and no small talk about the fog. A straight talker, Herbert decided.

  “I’m afraid your son Max was found dead last night,” Herbert said.

  Sir James’ head jerked back a fraction, and that was the extent of his shock. He had not been a mandarin for nothing, Herbert thought.

  “How?” he asked.

  “Drowned. In the Long Water. We’re treating it as murder.”

  “No one would have wanted to murder Max.”