Star Fall

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘My client has agreed to cooperate with this enquiry,’ Maitland said, sitting down beside him. ‘I wish that to be taken into account.’

  ‘It will be given all due weight,’ Slider promised, and turned his attention to the sorry object she was representing. ‘Mr Masterson, let’s begin with the matter of fraud, concerning the oil painting by Joest van Wessen, “Girl with Embroidered Reticule”,’ Slider said. ‘We know what you did. This is your chance to tell us why you did it.’ Some flicker of doubt registered in the hunted eyes, and Slider pushed the clear folder containing the letter across the table. ‘We’ve seen the painting in your former office. We know all about it.’

  ‘Where did you get this?’ Masterson said, looking at the letter as though it were a poisonous snake.

  ‘Never mind,’ Slider said. ‘Tell us about the painting. It wasn’t really for your wife, was it?’

  His eyes filled with tears. ‘I loved my wife. I adored her. She’s the love of my life. You have to understand. I knew I wasn’t good enough for her, her family and friends didn’t have to keep reminding me. Grammar-school boy, they called me, as if that was something to be ashamed of. They thought I was leeching off her. She married me for love!’ His voice went higher, as though this was an oft-repeated argument that had never worked. ‘Things may have changed, but she loved me in the beginning, and I would never have done anything to hurt her.’

  ‘So why did you?’ Slider asked.

  ‘I didn’t! She never found out – that was the whole point of the van Wessen. Look, I was a fool, I know that. But all her circle had money to burn, and I wanted to show them I could keep my end up. They talked as though I was making her live in a council house and wear rags. I had to put on a bit of a display,’ he said pathetically. ‘It was for her sake as much as mine – she couldn’t have liked having them sneer at her husband. So I bought her presents, jewellery, took her to expensive restaurants. Insisted on picking up the bill when her old circle were around. I had to dress well – they can spot a ready-made suit like a pig sniffs out truffles,’ he ended bitterly.

  ‘And you got into debt?’ Atherton suggested. ‘That sort of lifestyle doesn’t come cheap.’

  ‘I was a fool,’ Masterson said. ‘I couldn’t go to her for money. I couldn’t let her know I was in trouble. And I couldn’t get any more from the usual sources. So I borrowed from some other people. You know what I mean.’ He shrugged. ‘Once you get into their hands, they’ve got you over a barrel. Any interest rate they fancy, and you can’t argue. I had to get enough cash to pay them off, or they were going to make sure certain people knew all about it. They were hounding me; it was a nightmare. It would have finished me, but more than that, Bunny would have despised me. And then I met that forger at a party. Pat Duggan.’

  ‘How long had you been planning to have the painting copied?’ Slider asked.

  ‘I hadn’t,’ said Masterson. ‘It just came to me on the instant, when I met Duggan at a party in the building. The painting hung in a dark corner, and no-one ever looked at it. It was wallpaper, that was all. The state owns hundreds of these things. It wasn’t even an important piece. Who would ever know if it was the original or not? It wasn’t as if I was hurting anyone, stealing an old woman’s pension or something. It was a victimless crime, and God knows I needed the money more than the state did. So I took him along to my room. Told him I wanted it copied for my wife’s birthday. I think he was glad of the work. I arranged for him to be there to study it when there was no-one else around, and he did the actual painting at home. So we kept it secret from everyone.’

  ‘How did you exchange the copy with the original?’ Atherton asked.

  ‘I came back late one night, told security I had some paperwork to collect. I had the painting in a cardboard tube. I locked my office doors and made the switch. It was easy enough. The backboard was held in by little tacks, but it was so old, they came out with a bit of twisting. Then I knocked them back in with the foot of the stapler. Put the original into the tube and that was that.’

  ‘And how did you dispose of it?’ Slider asked.

  ‘Through an export agent I’d had dealings with. He’d been bugging me for an export licence for a van Dyck we weren’t going to let go. I told him I’d sign it for him if he fenced the van Wessen for me. He didn’t like me using those words, of course, but he reasoned like I did that it wasn’t an important painting, so where was the harm? And we couldn’t rat on each other because we were both in it equally, so he’d be safe enough. It cost me, though,’ he added gloomily. ‘He found a private buyer in Amsterdam, but he charged me a hefty commission on top of signing the licence. I only ended up with seven hundred and fifty thousand.’

  ‘Still quite a big sum,’ Slider pointed out, with scant sympathy.

  ‘But it was only just enough to pay off the debt,’ Masterson said fretfully. ‘I’d hoped for a bit extra, to tide me over, but once I’d paid up, I was back where I started, with nothing but my salary.’

  ‘And a wardrobe full of nice clothes, and a happy wife,’ Atherton said. ‘And you had the debt collectors off your back.’

  Masterson agreed, but gloomily. ‘It was good to be out from under,’ he admitted.

  ‘So you thought it would all be plain sailing from then on,’ said Atherton.

  ‘Until Rowland Egerton turned up with the letter,’ said Slider. It was the pivotal point. He was holding his breath, afraid Masterson would clam up, or that Maitland would intervene.

  But Masterson’s face almost writhed with the mixture of emotions that swept through him, and he said in what was practically a gasp, ‘That bastard! That utter bastard!’

  Maitland whispered something to him, and he shook his head, clenching and unclenching his fists.

  ‘He was blackmailing you, wasn’t he?’ Slider said with sympathy. ‘Blackmailers are the scum of the earth. The worst of all criminals.’

  Masterson seemed to take comfort from that. ‘Nobody knew what he was really like. They thought he was this genial, charming fellow on the TV. But underneath he was a snake.’

  ‘Tell me how he approached you,’ said Slider.

  ‘He came to me one day with a photocopy of the letter – just like that.’ He nodded to the folder on the table. ‘He’d been to my office and seen the painting and knew it was the copy. I remembered then that I’d come in the previous day and my secretary had said he’d been there to see me but hadn’t waited. He must have gone deliberately to check. Well, I was sunk. With that letter, he could destroy me.’

  ‘What did he want from you?’ Slider asked, though he already guessed at the answer. ‘Was it money?’

  ‘I wish to God it had been,’ Masterson said bitterly. ‘Money would have been easy compared with—’ He stopped.

  ‘Compared with what?’

  Masterson stared at the table, as though there was a crack there through which he could glimpse Hell. ‘He was having an affair with my wife,’ he said at last, in a low voice. It sounded not as if he was answering the question, but as if he was simply remembering the terrible fact that had ended his happiness for ever.

  ‘Had you suspected it already?’ Slider asked him gently.

  Masterson’s mouth bowed with bitterness. ‘No. I had no idea. I adored Bunny, but I knew she didn’t feel quite the same way about me – and there were always men hanging around her, flirting with her, sending her flowers. She attracted them like moths to a candle. I knew I wasn’t worthy of her, and I never knew what she saw in me, but she was a very loyal person and she’d never have showed me up. I always knew that if she took a lover she would be discreet about it. It was terrible to have Rowland stand there and tell me right out, to my face. So brutal. Like someone with a baseball bat smashing up everything in your house.’

  Slider nodded. ‘What did he want?’

  Masterson met his eyes, as though coming to the worst thing of all. ‘He wanted me to go along with it. I had to accept the fact and not object to it. And I had to keep
the secret. He said Bunny didn’t want me to know, so I must never let on to her that I knew. If I ever let slip so much as a hint that I knew about it, if she ever found out I knew, he’d use the letter and destroy me.’

  There was a silence as Masterson paused, and Slider reflected on the exquisite nature of the torture Egerton had inflicted. Not just to have power over him, but to make him suffer; to give him knowledge that poisoned him while forbidding him the outlet to be rid of it.

  ‘What did you do?’ he asked.

  ‘What could I do? I had to go along with it. He gave me the photocopy, but said he had the original in a safe place at home. As long as I kept my side, no-one would ever see it. And it didn’t come out. I suppose he kept his word. But all the time I knew. Him and Bunny. Oh, they were discreet. No-one else ever found out. But that only made it worse, somehow. As if I was colluding in it. That’s what everyone would have thought if it had come out – that I didn’t mind. But I minded. My God, I minded! Every day, every hour. It ate away inside me like acid.’

  ‘And then,’ Atherton said, ‘she died.’

  Masterson gave him a look as though he’d struck him. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My wife died.’

  ‘Tell me about what happened at the funeral,’ said Slider. ‘You weren’t completely honest with me before. He wasn’t there to court publicity, was he?’

  ‘No, he came to gloat. I went across and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing, and he had the gall to sympathize. He said he knew how I felt, said we’d both loved her, pretended his loss was as deep as mine. I wanted to hit him, but there was a crowd there, I couldn’t risk anyone seeing. I couldn’t even shout at him. But I made sure he knew how I felt. I told him he had no right to any feelings about Bunny. I said he was nothing but a worthless gigolo and that she’d never cared tuppence for him. I was her husband. I told him to get out. I told him I never wanted to see his ugly face again. And he just smiled and said we’d had a bargain, and he was glad I’d kept my part of it, and I should remember he’d kept his. And then he went.’

  ‘You didn’t ask him about the letter?’

  ‘I didn’t think about it then. I was too upset. I was shaking with rage. I had a job to calm myself down so as to talk to the other guests. And for a long time afterwards, I was too grief-stricken to think much about anything.’

  ‘So what brought it to your mind?’

  ‘It was last Wednesday. I was looking in my diary at home to see what I was doing, and I suddenly remembered that was the day Bunny would have been doing a shoot for the antiques programme. With Rowland. And I thought about the letter. I’d kept my end of the bargain. He ought to give it back. In fact, if he didn’t give it to me, it meant I was still living under the threat of it. I thought about it all day. I was half-scared to ask him, I admit it, in case he decided to blackmail me some more. I thought maybe he’d forgotten about it and I shouldn’t stir up a hornet’s nest. But I lay awake all night thinking about what he could still do to me.’

  ‘And the next day, when your committee finished early, you decided to go and see him,’ Atherton finished for him.

  Maitland intervened. ‘You don’t need to answer that.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Slider said. ‘As I told you, we know what you did. All of it. This is your chance to put your side of it. You must have been under intolerable strain.’

  Masterson seemed close to exhaustion. ‘More than you can imagine. The committee broke early, and I had nothing to do. My secretary had been keeping my diary free, because of my bereavement, but work was the only thing that kept my mind off it. Now it all came over me in a wave. I decided right then I’d had enough, I’d have to go and have it out with him. I knew he’d be home – I knew more about his routines, through Bunny, than I wanted to. I hoped he’d be alone. And he was. He gave me a sinister, slippery smile when he saw me, invited me in, and then just stood there looking at me, waiting for me to speak. So I said, “I want the letter back.” I said I’d kept my end, and now that Bunny was dead, it was all over.’

  ‘And he refused?’ said Atherton.

  ‘Of course,’ Masterson said, with a look of great bitterness. ‘He said, “Oh, I think I’d rather keep it.” I said why? And he said, “Because it amuses me.” And he picked up this box from the table behind him and opened it, and showed me the letter, all folded up. He said, “Bunny gave me this box. A lover’s gift. I think it’s rather appropriate that I keep it in here, don’t you?” I suppose I just snapped. He was grinning at me, taunting me, and I couldn’t take it any more. There was this paperknife thing on the table just beside me. I grabbed it and went for him.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to kill him. I wasn’t really thinking at all. But the knife went into his throat. He fell down and thrashed about. He made a horrible gurgling noise. And then he was lying still.’ He shuddered to a stop.

  ‘So what did you do?’ Slider asked quietly. He was feeling all too much pity for the man now.

  Masterson looked at him, haggard. ‘I realized what trouble I was in. But nobody knew I was there. If I could get away quickly, I could pretend I was still at the committee hearing. I – I know I shouldn’t have tried to cover it up. But after what he did to me – why should I be the one to suffer? And I was scared. I was just – so – scared. So I wiped the knife on my handkerchief, took the letter and left.’

  ‘You took the malachite box as well,’ said Atherton.

  ‘She’d given it to him. I couldn’t leave it there,’ he said simply. ‘I hurried out and flagged down a taxi and – well, I got back in reasonable time. I thought it was all right. I didn’t know,’ he added with a touch of anger, ‘that he’d got another copy.’

  ‘It was on his computer,’ said Slider.

  ‘I suppose I should have known he’d do that. He never meant to let me go.’

  ‘He liked to keep control over his victims,’ Atherton said.

  ‘There were others?’ Masterson said. ‘I’m not surprised. He was a filthy blackmailer, and he deserved to die.’ He obviously heard his own words on the air, and the anger drained away. ‘What happens now?’ he asked, almost humbly.

  ‘If you continue to cooperate fully, I’m sure the mitigating circumstances will be taken into account,’ Slider said. ‘But that’s not for me to decide. We found the malachite box in your wardrobe, but where is the letter?’

  ‘I burned it.’ He looked at Slider. ‘I won’t go to prison, will I?’ he asked, much as Lavender had. Prison only worked as a deterrent on the people who were least likely to end up there.

  ‘I’m afraid you must prepare yourself for a custodial sentence,’ Slider said. ‘Murder is still murder.’

  As they walked up the stairs, Slider found his hands were shaking from all the vicarious emotions.

  ‘Blackmail is a disgusting thing. I wonder what I would have done in his shoes,’ Atherton said thoughtfully. ‘Probably planned ahead and made a better job of it.’

  ‘Don’t tell me that,’ Slider objected.

  ‘He could still recant,’ Atherton said.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. As soon as the blood on his coat gets typed, he’s done like a kipper, with or without a confession. God, I’m tired,’ he said, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘No use being tired. You’ve got a night’s work ahead of you,’ said Atherton.

  ‘If I have, you have,’ said Slider grimly.

  ‘It’s a beautiful case,’ Porson said, and the way he said it made Slider misgive. It was late on Friday afternoon, and he still hadn’t been home. Nor had Porson, and he’d been over at Hammersmith all afternoon into the bargain. ‘You’ve got the busted alibi, the tube journey covered, the taxi-driver’s ID, the copy of the letter, that blasted box, and best of all the blood evidence from the overcoat.’ They hadn’t heard back from the lab yet, but it was only a matter of hours. ‘Plus motive to dive for. And the confession. No loose ends. Very nice indeed.’

  ‘But?’ Slider said. ‘I can hear a but coming.’

  Porson
regarded him steadily like a soldier facing a firing squad. ‘The powers that be aren’t keen to take it any further. He’s a government minister, for God’s sake! You can’t expect the Home Secretary to be happy about stirring up a stink. The PM doesn’t want another by-election. Plus the BBC top coots are putting in their twopenn’orth. They’ve got six episodes of this antiques programme in the can that they haven’t aired yet, and a scandal about Egerton and the bunny rabbit will blow the whole programme out of the water. And the Director General, surprise surprise, is a pal of Deputy Commissioner Redbridge, and they both play golf with the head of the Crown Prosecution Service. Heads are being put together, and tuts are being tutted. So don’t be too upset, laddie, if they decide it’s not in the public interest to prosecute. It’s a can of worms. Egerton turns out to’ve been an excrescence, and the thinking seems to be it wasn’t so much homicide as pesticide.’

  ‘Sir,’ Slider protested. ‘A man was murdered.’

  ‘I know. I don’t like it any more than you do, but the power’s not in our hands.’

  ‘And what about the art fraud, sir?’

  ‘Old buns. Water under the dyke.’

  ‘A victimless crime?’ Slider asked sourly.

  ‘No such thing,’ said Porson. He paced a bit. ‘Frankly, I can’t see how they can hope to keep the whole thing buttoned up. Too many people know too much already. Even if there’s no leak.’

  ‘My firm doesn’t leak,’ Slider said.

  ‘I know that. But you know what the press is like. With an MP involved they won’t stop till they sniff it out. And there’s always Rupert Melling. There’s a chap who could make a hint go a long way. Anyway, you’ve done your job, you can be proud of that. The rest is up to the gods.’

  Despite the unsatisfactory ending, Slider had to authorize the usual post-case pints party at the Boscombe Arms. It wouldn’t have been fair on his people to have sulked about it. They’d all done their part and deserved to celebrate.