Orchestrated Death

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  Atherton’s face, when he opened the door, was carefully schooled to show nothing of his feelings either of annoyance or surprise, and he invited them in politely. Joanna eyed him, unconvinced.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind too much having me here? It was terribly short notice, I know, with no shops open. You don’t have to feed me, if there isn’t enough.’

  ‘There’s enough,’ he said economically. ‘Go on in, take your coats off.’

  Slider glanced at him defensively, and followed Joanna in under Atherton’s door-holding arm. The front door opened directly onto the living-room, a haven of deep armchairs, crammed bookshelves, and a real fire leaping energetically in the grate and reflecting cheerfully in the brass scuttle.

  ‘Oh, what a gorgeous room!’ Joanna said at once. She turned to Atherton an innocent face, ‘I had an elderly aunt once who lived in an artesian cottage, and it wasn’t a bit like this.’

  Atherton walked into it. ‘You mean artisan cottage,’ he said, his eyebrows alone deploring her ignorance.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said gravely, ‘it was very damp.’

  There was a brief silence during which Slider watched Atherton anxiously, knowing he was proud, and more accustomed to using Slider as his straight man than being one himself. But an uncontrollable smirk began to tug at his lips, and after a moment he gave in to it and grinned along with Joanna.

  ‘You should have told me she was silly,’ he said to Slider. ‘Have a drink and enjoy the fire. What will you have?’

  Oedipus, who had been stretched out belly to the flames, got up politely and came across to wipe some of his loose hair onto Joana’s pink velvet dungarees. She bent and offered him a hand, and he arched himself and walked under it lingeringly, by inches.

  ‘Gin and tonic if there is, please. What’s his name?’

  ‘Oedipus. Bill?’

  ‘Same please. Thanks.’

  ‘Why Oedipus?’

  ‘Because Oedipus that lives here, of course. Really, you are very dull.’

  Slider was surprised at the rudeness, but Joanna grinned and said, ‘There are two sorts of people in the world, those who quote from Alice –’

  ‘And those who don’t.’

  ‘Alice?’ Slider said blankly.

  ‘In Wonderland,’ Atherton elucidated, and smiled at Joanna on his way to the kitchen. Slider sat down, acknowledging, while not necessarily understanding, that the simple fact of sharing a quotation with Joanna had changed Atherton from not-very-well-concealed hostility to open partisanship. There was nowt queerer than intellectuals, he told himself resignedly; unless it was cows.

  Joanna had taken the armchair by the fire, and Oedipus now jumped up onto her lap, sniffed it delicately, turned round once, and settled himself majestically with one massive, Landseer paw on each of her knees. Atherton brought all three glasses at once in his large, long hands, distributed them, and settled himself.

  ‘Well, what first?’ he said. ‘You’ve seen the preliminary report on Mrs Gostyn?’

  ‘Yes, and there’s no doubt, except that there’s every doubt,’ Slider sighed. ‘Beevers went round there, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. The carpet was rucked up, as if she’d put her foot on it and it slid away from her. He tested it, and it was slippery enough to have done that. She would have fallen backwards and struck her head on the corner of the fender. There was a smear of blood there, and the wound was consistent, according to Freddie Cameron, in shape, kind and force needed, with such a fall. Sufficient in a woman of her age and general condition to have proved fatal. No sign of a struggle, or of forcible entry –’

  ‘But there wouldn’t have been.’ Slider interrupted, staring into his glass darkly. ‘She knew him, didn’t she? That nice Inspector Petrie – why shouldn’t she let him in? I should have warned her –’

  ‘Come on, Bill, it’s not your fault. We don’t even know it was him. Why should he come back? He’d got what he came for the first time.’

  ‘Maybe he came back to silence her. She was the only one who could identify him.’

  ‘We don’t know that it wasn’t an accident. She might have got nervous and stepped back from him, for instance, and just slipped.’

  Slider smiled. ‘I thought he wasn’t even there?’

  Atherton looked a little put out. ‘Someone was there all right. Beevers interviewed the couple upstairs, the Barclays, and they think they heard someone moving about in Anne-Marie’s flat, about the time we reckon it happened.’

  ‘He went back for something. Something he’d forgotten the first time. What?’

  ‘The violin?’

  ‘Got to be. And then went downstairs to stop Mrs Gostyn’s mouth. One out of two, better than nothing.’

  ‘Well, it’s possible,’ Atherton conceded. He gave a grim sort of smile. ‘The Barclays are moving out, going to stay with her mother in Milton Keynes. That’s a sign of desperation if ever I heard one.’

  ‘Scared?’

  The grin widened. ‘They wouldn’t let Beevers in. Even after he put his ID through the letterbox. He persuaded them to phone the station and Nicholls gave them a description and the number of his car. Even then, when they let him in, Mrs B was standing well back with the baby clutched in her arms, while Mr B tried to look menacing with a large spanner.’

  ‘It’s all very well, but they must have been terrified,’ Joanna said indignantly. ‘Two of their neighbours murdered …’

  ‘You haven’t seen Beevers,’ Atherton said. ‘He’s all of five-foot-five, completely spherical, with a chubby little phizog like a teddy bear. He looks about as dangerous as a scatter cushion.’

  Joanna, unconvinced, turned to Slider. ‘What was that about a violin? Surely it would have been in her car? She had it with her at the session.’

  ‘That’s what we would have assumed. We haven’t found her car yet, of course, but we certainly found a violin in her flat, so either someone took it back there, or she had two.’

  ‘Not that I know of,’ Joanna said. ‘I only ever saw the one. But in any case, why would anyone want to risk going back there to collect it?’

  ‘Because it’s extremely valuable, of course,’ said Atherton.

  ‘But it was nothing special,’ she said, puzzled.

  ‘You call a Stradivarius nothing special?’

  Now Joanna laughed. ‘She didn’t have a Strad! She had a perfectly ordinary German fiddle, nineteenth-century, nice enough, but not spectacular.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Slider asked.

  ‘Of course I’m sure!’ She looked from one to the other. ‘I sat next to her, remember, I saw it hundreds of times. She bought it for nine thousand. She had to take out a bank loan to buy it.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ Slider said, ‘we found a Stradivarius in her flat, in an old, cheap case with two cheap bows.’

  ‘I took it to Sotheby’s to have it valued,’ said Atherton. ‘They think it might be worth as much as a million pounds.’

  Joanna’s lips rehearsed the price silently, as if she didn’t understand what the figures meant. Then she shook her head. ‘I don’t understand. Where would she get a fiddle like that? How could she possibly afford it? And why didn’t she use it? How could anyone who owned a Strad like that not play it?’

  ‘Maybe she thought it was too valuable to use,’ Slider hazarded.

  Joanna shook her head again. ‘It isn’t like that. A fiddle’s not like a diamond ring. You have to play them, use them. Even the insurance companies understand that.’

  ‘Then the only other explanation is that she didn’t want anyone to know she had it.’

  ‘Stolen?’ Joanna said, but Slider could see she didn’t believe that, either. ‘Look, fiddles like that are like – like famous paintings. You know, “Sunflowers” or the “Mona Lisa”. They don’t just appear and disappear. People know them, and they know who has them. If one had been stolen, everyone would know about it. You’d have the details somewhere.’

  ‘Are you quite sure she didn�
�t play it? Would you really know what violin she was playing, if you had no particular reason to notice?’

  ‘It’s one of the first things you discuss when you get a new desk partner,’ she said without emphasis. ‘What sort of fiddle do you play? How much was it? Where did you get it? That sort of thing. And you get used to the sound of it. There are all sorts of little peculiarities you have to adapt to. Even if you never look at the thing, you’d know instantly if your partner played on a different instrument, especially if it was one of Stradivarius quality. It just wouldn’t sound the same.’

  Atherton, at least, understood; Slider accepted without understanding because it was her. Their drinks were finished, and Atherton said, ‘Let’s eat, shall we? Feed the beast. Would you two like to lay the table while I do things in the kitchen? You’ll find everything in that drawer, there.’

  A little while later they were seated round the gate-leg table eating smoked mackerel pâté and hot toast, and drinking Chablis. Oedipus also had a chair drawn up to the table, where he sat very upright with his eyes half closed, as if he could hardly bear the sight of such unattainable delicacies.

  ‘He’s better if he sits where he can see,’ Atherton said without apology. ‘Otherwise his curiosity sometimes gets the better of his manners.’

  ‘This is delicious,’ Joanna said. ‘Did you make the pâté yourself?’

  Atherton looked gratified at the compliment. ‘Marks and Sparks. Purveyors of comestibles to the rich and single. One of the truly great things about not being married and having children is that you never have to eat boring food. You can have what you like, when you like.’

  ‘Oh, I agree,’ Joanna said. ‘I’d sooner not bother to eat if there’s nothing interesting around. I like small amounts of really exotic things.’

  Slider looked at them grimly. ‘All right for you youngsters. You wait until you grow up. Bird’s Eye Beefburgers and Findus Crispy Pancakes will catch up with you in the end.’

  ‘I shall never be that old,’ Atherton said with a delicate shudder. ‘I’ll go and get the next course.’

  ‘Can I help?’ Joanna said dutifully, but he was already gone. He returned very soon with a recipe-dish pheasant, reheated. ‘Marks and Spencer?’ Joanna said.

  ‘Wainwright and Daughter,’ Atherton corrected. ‘I always thought Daughter was the other bloke’s name – you know, Mr Daughter.’

  He added Egyptian new potatoes, Spanish broccoli, and Guatemalan petits pois.

  ‘Harrods?’ Joanna tried.

  ‘Marks and Spencer,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Air travel and greenhouse forcing have effectively eliminated the seasons.’

  ‘And freezing,’ Joanna added.

  ‘Nothing can eliminate freezing, unless you go and live on the equator. Have some more Chablis.’

  While they ate, Slider told them about his interview with Martin Cutts, and Anne-Marie’s fear. Atherton listened attentively, and then said, ‘I know you think she was mixed up in something really heavy, and that this was a gang murder of some kind, but you know there’s nothing to go on. The boys from Lambeth went over her flat with a fine-tooth comb and found absolutely zilch.’

  ‘The boys from Lambeth?’ Joanna asked.

  ‘The Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratories, at Lambeth.’

  ‘But they wouldn’t,’ Slider said patiently. ‘That’s what really convinces me, that the whole thing was so carefully organised. They haven’t made a single mistake, except for the violin.’

  ‘It’s circular thinking to say that because there’s no evidence it means that they were too good to leave any. Why flog a dead horse? The Thompson lead is much better. It only wants working up a bit to look presentable.’

  ‘All right, tell me the way you see it,’ Slider sighed.

  ‘Point one: Thompson had a good reason for wanting to get rid of her. She was being a bloody nuisance.’

  ‘That’s not much of a motive.’

  ‘Better than no motive at all. Anyway, point two: his girlfriend is a theatre nurse and has access to the drug used to kill Anne-Marie.’

  ‘Except that none was missing. You know we checked with all the hospitals first thing.’

  Atherton shrugged. ‘If she was smart enough to steal it she’d be smart enough to forge the records, or cover up the theft in some way. Whoever got the stuff would have to do that.’

  ‘Well, go on.’

  ‘Point three: Thompson lied about where he was that evening. He says he went for a drink at a certain pub – where no-one remembers seeing him – and then went straight home. But the hall porter at the hospital saw him there that night – he’s seen him often enough picking up his girlfriend to recognise him.’

  ‘Well, maybe he was picking her up that night, too.’

  ‘But she says she didn’t see him. Why would he go there, unless to see his girlfriend? Or, if he did go there to see her, why is she lying?’

  ‘It’s not much,’ Slider said, shaking his head.

  ‘Oh come on,’ Joanna interrupted, having restrained herself long enough, ‘you can’t believe that weed Simon Thompson murdered Anne-Marie? He’s a complete rabbit.’

  Atherton looked at her. ‘Well, as it happens, I agree with you, but that isn’t evidence, is it? And Bill will tell you that there are plenty of murderers – particularly domestic murderers – who don’t look as if they could or would hurt a fly. Now, I’ve got a Polish cheesecake to finish off with, delicious enough to make a strong man weep, and the coffee’s made. If you’d like to go and sit by the fire, I’ll bring it all over on a tray and we can be comfortable.’

  Slider settled in the armchair by the fire and Joanna sat on the floor by his feet. Atherton shut the remains of the pheasant in the fridge, and Oedipus pretty soon came mooching back in to enjoy the second-best pleasures of the fire and Slider’s trousers, which being light grey showed up either black or white hair most satisfactorily. When everyone had plate, fork, cup and glass disposed about them, Atherton settled himself on the sofa and said, ‘All right, Bill. Let’s hear what you think.’

  ‘There are several things about this case that bother me,’ he began slowly. ‘I haven’t yet begun to put them together. But look – her body was stripped naked, surely to prevent her from being identified? But then her foot was marked after death in a way that looked like a signal or warning to someone. She lived in a modest way in a poky little bedsitter, but she had in her possession a violin worth almost a million pounds. Her aunt says she had no money but what she earned as a musician, but in Birmingham she lived in an expensive luxury flat. She had a large inheritance that she couldn’t get her hands on until she married, and suddenly after the trip to Italy she made a desperate attempt to persuade Simon Thompson to marry her. When the attempt failed, she seemed depressed, and told Martin Cutts she was afraid. Just before Christmas her diary goes missing, and she’s murdered at a time when it’s most likely she won’t be missed for a considerable time. On the night of her murder she goes out to her car, and then comes running back to try to persuade Joanna and the others to go with her to a different pub.’

  He stopped, and there was silence, except for the crackling of the fire and the suddenly audible purring of Oedipus, now seated in Atherton’s lap.

  ‘So what does it all add up to,’ Atherton said. It wasn’t a question.

  ‘One thing is obvious – the Birmingham connection’s got to be followed up. John Brown said that she still went up there on a regular basis, to play for her old orchestra.’ He turned to Joanna. ‘Is that likely?’

  She frowned. ‘We all do outside work when we can get it, and Ruth Chisholm – their fixer – is much nicer than our horrible old Queen John, who wouldn’t put a woman on the call list to save his life. But she was very lucky they wanted her. There must have been plenty of other people – local people – after the work.’

  ‘So it’s quite possible that she wasn’t really working for her old orchestra, but simply putting that forward as a reason f
or going up there.’

  ‘But why did she want to go up there?’

  ‘Why would anyone want to go to Birmingham?’ Atherton agreed. ‘But on the other hand, why put forward a reason at all? Why not just go and tell no-one.’

  ‘Presumably,’ Slider said slowly, ‘on instructions.’

  Atherton looked at him sidelong. ‘You still believe there’s a big organisation behind all this?’

  He shrugged. ‘Otherwise, as you say, why give a reason at all?’

  ‘You don’t know yet that she didn’t go there to work,’ Joanna said.

  ‘Easy enough to find out,’ Atherton said. ‘I suppose that means you’ll be putting in another 728, Bill?’

  What’s a 728?’ Joanna asked obediently.

  ‘Permission to leave the Metropolitan Area,’ Slider supplied. ‘We have to apply for it if we go out on police business.’

  Atherton grinned. ‘It also means overtime, expenses, petrol money, pub lunches – no wonder the uniformed branch think we have an easy life. And who will you take with you, he asked him innocently?’

  ‘Norma,’ Slider said promptly.

  ‘The hell you will!’

  ‘Who’s Norma?’ Joanna asked, still the obedient feed.

  ‘WDC Swilley,’ Atherton said with relish. ‘We call her Norma for obvious reasons. She’s good fun, drinks like a fish, swears like a matelot – typical CID, in fact. But I don’t think it’s on, Bill. I can see the Super licensing you to trundle her off in your passion-wagon for a fumble in the aptly named lay-bys. Stopping off for a pub lunch with Beevers or me is one thing, but cock-au-van is going too far.’

  The phone rang, and while Atherton was out of the room Joanna turned to lean on Slider’s knees and say, ‘Do you really think Anne-Marie was involved with some big criminal organisation? It seems so unlikely to me.’

  ‘You prefer Atherton’s theory?’

  ‘There must be other explanations. But if it came to it, I’d prefer your theory to his.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked, genuinely interested.

  ‘Because you’re better looking than him.’

  Atherton came back looking triumphant. ‘They’ve found Anne-Marie’s car. A forensic team’s going over it right now. Also the report on Thompson’s car has come in. Nothing of great interest except some long, dark hairs. Very long, dark hairs.’