by Roy Lewis
‘As what, Cathy?’
There was no mistaking the implication in his tone and Cathy’s surprise was matched only by her hurt. For some reason Mike was making something of her relationship with Lendon, making something unpleasant of it — and she knew that he could know nothing that would make such an inference remotely possible.
‘I think you should explain yourself, Mike.’
‘Why should I go on the defensive? You explain yourself, Cathy.’ She released his hand with dignity.
‘I don’t know what you mean by explain. Charles Lendon is my principal. We have a working relationship. He looks upon me as an assistant solicitor rather than as an articled clerk. He treats me professionally and with respect.’
‘He’s never treated any woman with respect!’
‘Charles Lendon treats me with professional courtesy and respect. Charles Lendon is about thirty years older than I am—’
‘Hell’s bells!’ Mike groaned. ‘Do you think that makes any difference at all? Don’t you know Lendon’s reputation? Don’t you know that—’
Cathy stood up.
‘There are many things I don’t know; there are some things I do not care to know.’
She was conscious of heads turning at the bar behind her but she was angry. It was an anger unlike her previous mood of desperation: this anger was cold, and precise.
‘I’ve no idea what you’re seeking to imply, Mike, and I don’t care. I work for Charles Lendon; he’s kind to me, professionally, and I have no reason to question his conduct in other directions. I want to talk no more about it now. I’d like to go home.’
Mike rose to stand beside her. He seemed disturbed — his face was flushed. He fumbled awkwardly with his coat as they moved towards the door and only Cathy replied to the barman’s good night. They walked in silence across to the car and Mike held the door open for her as she climbed in. When he took the driver’s seat beside her she said nothing. The bonnet of the car sparkled whitely under the moon. Mike pulled on his gloves and shivered, then looked at her.
‘It’s almost as frosty outside,’ he said gently, ‘as it is in here.’
Cathy huddled into her coat and made no reply.
‘I’m sorry, Cathy,’ he tried again, but she could bring herself only to incline her head slightly, in recognition of his apology. It seemed to satisfy him to a little extent at least, for he nodded in his turn and then started the engine.
‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘believe me. It’s just that I know Lendon — and I know his reputation. And if I thought that he’d laid a hand on you I’d break his damned neck!’
Chapter 3
Lendon, Philips and Barrett was not an old-established firm of solicitors. It did not have the background that many of the firms in Canthorpe possessed. The other firms had been built up on a basis of trust and litigation work, for in the nineteenth century there had been little to gain from the monopoly of conveyancing since relatively little land changed hands. When it did, of course, the work was remunerative with each page of a verbose conveyance being charged for separately. But when Lendon, Philips and Barrett was formed times had changed. It was 1942, some years after the Law Society obtained the right to make rules of professional conduct, some years after solicitors were forced to keep their clients’ money in a separate account from their own, and shortly after solicitors were required by law to produce an auditor’s certificate on their accounts when applying for renewal of the annual practising certificate.
Charles Lendon had qualified in 1937, but the war had called him, albeit briefly. He was invalided out in 1941, a major, with a scar above his right eye from exploding shrapnel, a piece of which remained embedded in his head near the brain. Too close to justify the risk of an operation, it caused his release from the army, but in a sense it added to his appearance: the scar gave a devil-may-care lift to his eyebrow that went well with his general appearance — lean, athletic, nervy. He was a little above middle height, and rather short in his speech with fools. He joined Philips and Barrett in their firm and the old gentlemen were only too glad to see him. They welcomed his glamour, his incisiveness and his capacity for attracting lucrative business. The assiduity with which Charles Lendon made and maintained contacts on the social and professional plane illustrated perfectly that the rule of etiquette which prevented solicitors from advertising or touting for business need in no way inhibit the flood of new work that came in.
But this did not deny the fact also that there were occasions when Charles Lendon was somewhat of an embarrassment to the firm. He could be a charming man, and was a handsome one, and a sound businessman, but he was not without his weaknesses. They became apparent during the early years: old Barrett, just before he died, had been heard to say that if Lendon could only have sublimated his sexual drive into other channels he could have become Prime Minister. As it was, it seemed in the 1940s that Charles Lendon’s ambitions lay largely in the field of sexual athleticism. And old Barrett’s hope that the whole thing was something that Lendon would grow out of was never fulfilled.
It was true that Lendon’s conduct became tempered with discretion in later years: his earlier canters had been open and fearless of convention, but his later outings were at least more circumspect. He had learned to cool his passion with an element of caution.
Philips, the other partner, worried little about Lendon.
His reaction had always been — ‘Don’t give a damn whether a man wears a coloured waistcoat, a moustache or another man’s wife as long as he does his job well,’ and it was a precept which he clung to until he also died, in 1949, leaving Lendon as senior partner and Brian, old man Philips’s son, as a recently qualified junior-some years younger than Lendon and nowhere near his peer in efficiency.
During the 1950s the firm doubled its profits and although assistant solicitors were employed none were taken into partnership: Lendon used them for a few years and when they became insistent in their claims he advised them that a move would be in their interest. Brian Philips remained quietly in the background; he knew his place, he was the sort of man who would always know his place. It cried out from his pale blue eyes, so unlike Lendon’s piercing grey, and it was apparent from his over-precise dressing, his fussy attention to personal detail, his inability to hold another man’s eyes for any length of time, his continued assumption that he was in danger of offending the client with whom he dealt. He knew his place . . . and yet there were times when he spoke to Lendon, times when the flicker in his eyes held an emotion positive enough to amount even to dislike when he looked at his senior partner. Entirely negative people rarely held positive emotions so to that extent Brian Philips could not be regarded as negative.
The 1950s had gone and the booming years of the sixties were slipping past. The firm was prospering. Two assistant solicitors were taken on and Cathy Tennant joined the firm as an articled clerk. A month later Brian Philips surprisingly left Lendon, Philips and Barrett and set up in practice on his own account on the other side of town. Lendon was now sole principal. Properties changed hands, wills were drawn up, contracts were sealed, marriages begun and ended. The Canthorpe Borough Police Force was amalgamated with the County Constabulary and January came in bitter and cold. One frosty morning Jenny Carson was brutally murdered in Kenton Wood; a week later Mike Enson fell in love with Cathy Tennant. But Charles Lendon remained the same; the years had changed him but little. He had kept his attitudes, his flair, his figure, his looks, his respected position in the community . . . and his appetite for women. He had never married.
Perhaps this was why there seemed to be no one to mourn for him when he was found at the Old Mill above Insterley, five days after the quarrel with Carson, with his sightless eyes wide and glazed and a twelve-inch rusty steel skewer in his heart.
Chapter 4
Three locally born villagers out at Hamberley had told Chief Constable Rogers that he would pay for his rashness in. pruning his roses so early. It was all very well, they said, it was
all very well pruning at the first sight of a warm spring sun, but the frosts weren’t over yet and at Hamberley the frosts could tear the heart out of a rose-bush. So Chief Constable Rogers gnawed at his lip and worried and realized that he hadn’t shaved too well that morning, as he touched the stubble just below the curve of his chubby chin. He shook his head.
‘It would be a mistake,’ he murmured.
Detective Chief Superintendent Simpson scowled. The expression on his face had put the fear of death into more than a few villains over the years, married as it was to a massive, broad-shouldered frame and huge, cruel hands. Yet to date its effect upon Chief Constable Rogers had been one of irritation only: Rogers was of the new school that believed in using a psychological key to open a door rather than a bludgeon to batter it down.
Simpson prowled around the room like a restless cat. He carried his head low, belligerently.
‘I think we can handle it . . . no, I’m damn sure we can handle it!’ he said with a trace of anger in his tone.
‘And I’m equally convinced that we have more than enough on our plate already. Now be reasonable, Hugh!’
Rogers knew even as he said it that reasonableness had nothing at all to do with the matter: it was almost eight months now since Hugh Simpson had reached his present rank and he had yet to lose the novelty of the flavour of power that it gave him. Simpson was aware of his rank on all conceivable occasions: Rogers guessed he even took it to bed with him, and the thought caused a smile to touch his lips at the possibilities presented by such a situation.
Unfortunately, Simpson saw the smile and though he could in no way guess its import he was obviously angered.
‘You think the force isn’t up to it!’ he said and marched across to the window. ‘Well, I think it is, and I think that if you don’t agree to handing this over to us it’ll be a serious blow to morale!’
The chief constable rose and came from behind his desk to walk across to the window and stand beside the irate chief superintendent. He looked up at Simpson: the man was a good three inches taller than he, and said in the most soothing tones he could muster: ‘Hugh, you must know that I have every confidence in the force. You fully realize that I am aware of the quality of the manpower we have. But you’ve got to see reason on this thing. Let us just look at the facts. It’s not more than a year now since we amalgamated the county force with the Canthorpe Borough force. This in itself has caused problems — on the other hand, it accounts in part for your promotion, as you well know. But we still haven’t achieved the rationalization nor the slickness that a really fine force can muster, and until then we must tread with care. This is not a game — people are involved.’
‘I would be the last,’ Simpson said stiffly, ‘to suggest that it was a game, sir.’
The word had been badly chosen, Rogers admitted to himself. Neither the Force nor life itself was a game to Simpson: he was a hard, dedicated and ruthless man. Rogers sighed.
‘All right, I agree that I need hardly remind you of our public duties. You will accept on the other hand that the amalgamation poses certain problems. Allied to that is the Carson case.’
‘But—’
‘Please, Hugh, let me finish. When the Carson girl was murdered we were presented with a bombshell. You know very well what a case of this nature can mean: the publicity alone when a nine-year-old girl is assaulted and brutally murdered is enormous. The pressures brought upon us as a result are tremendous — every man in the force feels involved. And when there is no result after eight weeks of investigation—’
‘Sir—’
‘When, as I say, there is no result, the pressure remains and becomes more difficult to handle, if only because it becomes less strident but more personal, more nerve-sapping in its effects. So—’
‘So you don’t think we can handle the Lendon killing.’
‘I haven’t said that, Hugh. I haven’t said or intimated that the force can’t handle the Lendon killing. All I’m saying is that with the Carson enquiry still in our laps . . . and you’ll remember I gave you your head over that . . . it would be extremely unwise to ask you and the others to take upon yourselves the added burden of this Lendon matter. It’s too much. I think that there is only one course open to us.’
‘I believe, sir, that you’re underestimating the force. And I repeat, if we’re not called upon to handle the Lendon killing it’ll be a severe blow to morale. All I ask is—’
‘The answer is no, Hugh. And I don’t underestimate the difficulties. As far as I can see, it’s you who are over-estimating the capabilities of our young force.’
Simpson turned to glare at the chief constable. His mouth was hard with disappointment; it was obvious that he was taking Rogers’s refusal as a personal matter, a vote of no confidence.
‘Look, sir, I’m sure we can handle it. I know the Carson thing’s dragging on, but it’ll be only a matter of days before something breaks there. We do have three leads, as you know. And the Lendon killing, if you’ll only give me twenty-four hours at it I’m sure—’
‘No.’
Chief Constable Rogers injected the relevant amount of firmness into his tone to illustrate that as far as he was concerned the matter was decided. He turned away from the window and took up a more official position behind his desk.
‘I’ve given my reasons, Hugh. I think it would be unwise to burden the force with two investigations at once.’
‘But twenty-four hours only!’
Rogers looked at the chief superintendent coldly.
‘You plead a lost cause, Superintendent, and you show a surprising lack of regard for the ratepayers. You know as well as I that in a murder investigation the situation is quite clear. We handle it ourselves, or we call in the murder squad from Scotland Yard. If we handle it, we pay the costs. If we call in Scotland Yard the cost is shared. But shared only if we call them in within twenty-four hours: otherwise, calling them in at a later date means that the costs are dumped straight into our laps. I see little value in asking our ratepayers to bear the full costs of the Lendon enquiry simply to satisfy your ego.’
Simpson’s back stiffened. ‘Sir?’
‘That is how I see it.’ The chief constable’s tone was calm. ‘You already have your hands full with the Carson enquiry. You think that you should be allowed to handle the Lendon case too, and you regard it as an affront to you personally that I’ve decided to call in Scotland Yard, an affront to you and the force. I regard such feelings on your part as egotistical. Not that it makes any difference. I’ve reached my decision. We’ll be asking for the assistance of the murder squad.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Simpson’s craggy, lined face was impassive as he stood to attention. Rogers recognized the implied rebuke in the man’s stance and lack of expression. He sighed relenting.
‘Don’t take it so damned hard, Hugh. You’re new to your rank, you’ve plenty on your plate, and this Carson thing should be more than enough to drive any man into his grave with overwork. You’re far too valuable a man to be asked to dissipate his efforts over two investigations when you can concentrate upon, and get results in, one.’
It was obvious that Simpson remained unconvinced.
Rogers glowered at the chief superintendent. Every man had his faults, and with Simpson it was overconfidence, a prickly sense of injustice, an easily wounded pride and an overconsciousness of his rank. They were rough edges that the years might smooth away, but Rogers doubted it.
‘Just one more thing I have to say. I shall expect you to render every assistance to the man who is sent from Scotland Yard.’
‘Of course, sir.’
Of course. It went without saying, really. After all, hadn’t they both agreed that this wasn’t a game, a power play, a jockeying for position? The chief constable turned back to his desk and nodded as Simpson made his way out. A good officer, Simpson: brash, violent, and over-weening, but a good policeman.
In the corridor outside the chief constable’s room
Chief Superintendent Simpson lit a cigarette. His hand shook slightly with the anger that he still found some difficulty in controlling. He strode down the corridor and pushed through the door at the far end. A startled detective-constable hastily tried to push aside the newspaper he had been reading surreptitiously, but Simpson ignored him and thrust through the room and into his own office. He slammed the door behind him and with a quick petulance kicked the waste-paper basket aside before slumping down into the chair behind his desk. He glared moodily at the papers on his desk, and ground out the cigarette in the ashtray. It had hardly been smoked.
There was a light tap on the door, and Detective-Sergeant Turner entered with a murmured apology to place some more papers on the chief superintendent’s desk. He turned to go but when he reached the door he hesitated, then looked back to the chief superintendent, hunched and glowering behind his desk.
‘Er . . . what’s happening, sir?’
Simpson didn’t look up. His fist was balled on the desk and he was staring at it. Turner waited, but when Chief Superintendent Simpson’s reply came, it was with a snarl. ‘What’s happening? The chief constable — he’s calling in the bloody Mets!’
Chapter 5
The murder of Charles Lendon had had an electric effect upon the office of Lendon, Philips and Barrett that Thursday morning. The receptionist, Stella, was bubbling in the way only a seventeen-year-old girl can bubble with excitement. The three legal executives had held a short meeting of their own, decided to go about their business as efficiently as usual and keep the junior clerical staff in their places and hard at work. The two assistant solicitors, Parnell and Maxwell, had undertaken a long discussion as to what they should now do since the firm was without a principal, looked very serious and hinted at Charles Lendon’s sexual proclivities in hushed tones, and suggested to Cathy that it might well have had something to do with his murder. And hadn’t he ever made a pass at her?
