Speaker of Mandarin

by Ruth Rendell

  Lodged in the dead woman’s skull, egress stopped by the frontal bone, was a bullet from a Walther PPK 9 mm automatic. She had been shot at the closest possible range, the barrel of the gun having been in contact with the back of her head.

  Sir Hilary Tremlett’s more precise assessment narrowed down the time of death to between 2.15 and 3.45 a.m. Adela Knighton had been a normal healthy woman of about sixty-five, somewhat overweight, who had borne several children and at several times in her life had undergone surgery. For mastoid, for varicose veins, appendicitis and, within the past four or five years, a hysterectomy. There was a mild degree of bruising on the upper left arm.

  The fingerprints in Thatto Hall Farm proved to be those of the dead woman herself, Adam Knighton, Renie Thompson, Jennifer Norris and Angus Norris. On the evening of the day of her mother’s death, Mrs Norris had provided Wexford with a list of all the jewellery she believed her mother had possessed. But by that time Wexford’s officers, combing the grounds of Thatto Hall Farm, had found a green leather jewel case under the hedge by the front gates. Items from it also came to light, scattered haphazardly with no apparent attempt at concealment, in flowerbeds, under the same hedge, on the bank that bordered the road. Two watches, a gold bracelet, a string of pearls, two diamond and ruby rings in old-fashioned settings. Mrs Norris identified it all as having belonged to her mother and told Wexford that nothing was missing.

  He saw clearly what had happened. This was no burglar who had come into Thatto Hall Farm during the small hours. Whoever it was had taken the jewel case, having at the time the intention of making the intrusion look like robbery. Later, abandoning this idea as likely to deceive no one and not wishing to be encumbered with some not very valuable jewellery, he had thrown it away, item by item, as he fled from the house.

  He had known the house, he had known about that window. He had known Mrs Knighton would be alone. He had cut out that pane of glass and rested the cut-out pieces neatly up against the wall, entered silently, gone upstairs and awakened the sleeping woman. She had been forced to get up and walk downstairs ahead of him at gunpoint. The gun had been pressed against the back of her skull and she had been gripped by the upper arm. There, in the dining room—because she had refused to show him something, tell him something, lead him somewhere, promise, betray, give?—he had pressed the trigger and she had fallen forward, dead on the floor.

  That was what he thought had happened. It would do as a working hypothesis.

  ‘Knighton,’ said Wexford, ‘says he left home at three on Tuesday afternoon, having phoned for a car to take him to Kingsmarkham station, and caught the three-twenty-seven train. He has a car, a Volvo estate, but he says his wife wanted to use it and if he had let her drive him to Kingsmarkham it would have delayed her.’

  ‘Where was she going?’ Burden asked. They were in the car, being driven to London.

  ‘Shopping in Myringham. A regular Tuesday afternoon exercise, apparently. Knighton got to Victoria at four-fifteen and from there he went by tube to Lancaster Gate and walked the short distance to the flat of a friend of his called Adrian Dobson-Flint in Hyde Park Gardens, Dobson-Flint having arrived home a little earlier than usual to let him in.

  ‘This dinner at the Palimpsest Club was at seven for seven-thirty. He and Dobson-Flint left Hyde Park Gardens in a cab at ten to seven, remained at the club having their dinner and generally merry-making until eleven-thirty, at which time they left and walked home. There they had something to drink and went to bed at about half-past midnight. Dobson-Flint had to be in the Old Bailey by ten in the morning, so they were both up by eight. Dobson-Flint left soon after nine and Knighton about nine-twenty, catching the nine-forty train to Kingsmarkham from Victoria.’

  ‘You suspect him,’ said Burden.

  ‘Not really. Only I don’t know who else to suspect. Early days, I daresay. She left a will, by the way. Angus Norris told me all about it without waiting to be asked. His firm were her solicitors. Adela Knighton had quite a bit of money of her own, a few thousand inherited from an aunt, another few from an uncle, parents’ property, as like as not some share in a family trust. Anyway, there was two hundred thousand and she left it equally between her four kids.

  ‘Julian, the son in Washington, is married to an American woman whose father is some sort of millionaire. Roderick has a thriving law practice and his wife’s got her own employment agency. Colum, the youngest—he’s thirty—is an attaché at the British Embassy in Ankara and whether or not he was looking to his inheritance there’s no doubt he was in Turkey at three on Wednesday morning.

  ‘I jib a bit at the idea of a woman seven months pregnant killing her own mother. On the other hand, she wouldn’t have had to get in the window. She, apart from Knighton himself and Mrs Thompson, was the only person to have a key to the house. She would certainly have known her father was going to be away for the night and her mother would be alone. But where’s her motive? The fifty grand she would inherit? Norris is only an assistant solicitor but he’s obviously no fool and likely to be a partner one day. They live in Springhill Lane which is hardly a milieu for people short of the ready. We can put them on one side for the moment. Julian and his wife were in Washington, Colum, as I said, in Ankara and Roderick is alibi’d—if he needs an alibi—by his wife, his au pair, his unfortunate GP and no doubt would be by his mumps-stricken daughter if we asked her.’

  The chambers of which Adrian Dobson-Flint was a member were those to which Adam Knighton had formerly belonged. It was the death, and such a death, of Knighton’s wife which was presumably responsible for the expression of discreet woe on the face of the Clerk to Chambers, a man called Brownrigg, who showed Wexford and Burden into Dobson-Flint’s room.

  Adam Knighton’s friend was some seven or eight years younger than he, a man who must have been improved by his barrister’s wig, for he was almost totally hairless. Since his face was unlined, pink and youthful-looking, this gave him something of the appearance of a skinhead. His room too was untypical, neither dusty and dark nor a litter of books, but a coolly, creamily painted office with fawn carpet and mahogany furniture, a view of a little enclosed garden and a window that let in sunlight.

  ‘In what way can I be of assistance to you gentlemen?’

  The skinhead image was quickly dispelled by Dobson-Flint’s gracious, modulated voice. It too held the requisite, muted note of sorrow. The baby face contorted into a twist of petulant distress.

  ‘I must say this is really the most shocking and appalling thing I ever heard.’

  Which, if it were true, would give a very curious slant to the man’s courtroom activities over the past quarter of a century or so. Wexford asked him for an account of Tuesday evening. In discussing alibis, times, reasons why persons should be in such and such a place rather than in another, Dobson-Flint was very much at home. And in spite of having heard his voice raised in public almost every day for many years, he was still fond of the sound of it. He discoursed lucidly, mellifluously, on the dinner party, the date some weeks previously on which invitations to it had been received, the time of Knighton’s arrival at his flat, the time of their departure for and arrival at the Palimpsest. There was a note of faint amusement, such as would have been present had he been playing with a witness like a fly fisherman tickling a salmon. Underlying it seemed to be the unspoken question: Are you so obtuse that you can even remotely consider my old friend Adam Knighton under suspicion of murder?

  His distress at the death of his friend’s wife, if he had ever felt it, now seemed forgotten. His pale blue eyes twinkled. He sat back in his chair with his legs crossed at the knees, one arm resting negligently on the arm of the chair, the other hand supporting his chin.

  ‘It being a fine clear night,’ he said, ‘we resolved not to indulge ourselves with a cab but instead, in short, to walk it. We arrived on my doorstep at precisely two minutes to midnight. And now, Chief Inspector, you will ask me in time-honoured fashion how I can be so sure of the time, will you
not? And my answer will be to you that as I raised my hand to insert my latchkey in the lock Mr Knighton informed me of the time, remarking that twenty-eight minutes from St James’s to the Bayswater Road was not bad for two men no longer in their first or indeed second youth.’

  With people of Dobson-Flint’s kind Wexford generally allowed his own manner to become dull and dead-sounding, and it was in a leaden voice that he asked, ‘You live alone, sir?’

  ‘Oh, yes, and have done these twenty years since my wife and I reached an amicable agreement to part.’

  Wexford made no comment on this marital revelation. Dobson-Flint said, ‘Shall I proceed? Mr Knighton and I each took a glass of Chivas Regal whisky and retired to our beds at approximately twenty past twelve. I say “approximately” because this time Mr Knighton did not happen to make any remark upon the time. At seven forty-five or thereabouts in the morning I rose up, took my bath, girded my loins and was about to enter Mr Knighton’s room with a cup of China tea when he appeared, fully-dressed, and announcing his kind intention of taking breakfast with me. At nine-ten, as is my wont, I departed to win my bread, leaving Mr Knighton to go on his way rejoicing, though in point of fact it was rather to a weeping, a wailing and a gnashing of teeth.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Did Mr Knighton often stay with you?’

  ‘Often is an imprecise adverb,’ said Dobson-Flint in his best Central Criminal Court manner. ‘A man might say “I often go abroad”, implying he leaves the country three or four times a year, but he may equally aver, “I often visit a cinema,” meaning in this case that he attends a picture palace twice a week.’ He smiled.

  ‘And which would be true of Mr Knighton’s overnight stays with you?’

  ‘Neither!’ said Dobson-Flint triumphantly. ‘It would probably be true to say that, in the three years since his retirement and removal to the country, he has stayed with me on an average one and a half times per year.’

  Wexford got up. ‘I expect you’ll be having a lunch-time break now, sir?’

  ‘If you will excuse me, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘I didn’t quite mean that, Mr Dobson-Flint. I meant that since you’ll no doubt be free for the next hour or so, we might use the time in having a look at this flat of yours.’

  ‘Oh, come, is that necessary?’

  In the same deadening voice Wexford said, ‘It’s essential. I have a car. You won’t be much inconvenienced.’

  Hyde Park Gardens, the mid-nineteenth-century terrace which faces the Bayswater Road and Hyde Park at the Lancaster Gate, is divided by Brook Street into two sections. The eastern part is older, larger and rather grander. Here the Sri Lankans have their embassy, and from a house once owned by the mysterious Duke of Portland (who went about always in a black veil) legend has it a secret passage runs underground to Baker Street. However, it was in the western terrace of Hyde Park Gardens that Adrian Dobson-Flint had his flat. Wexford had been into the block once before, years ago, and then had gone in through the front entrance, up the steps, through double doors, past the porters’ office and up the wide curving staircase. He expected to do so again but Dobson-Flint directed the taxi into Stanhope Place which runs along the back of Hyde Park Gardens and led them up to the front door of a flat which though on the ground floor at the back would have to be designated ‘basement’ or ‘lower ground floor’ at the front. It took Wexford no more than a few seconds to realize that it was only from these flats which had access to Stanhope Place that occupants of Hyde Park Gardens could come and go without passing through the front entrance or chancing an encounter with porters.

  On the doorstep Wexford said, ‘What time did Mr Knighton get here on Tuesday afternoon?’

  ‘I was back here by five,’ said Dobson-Flint. ‘Shall we say ten past? Yes, I should say about ten past.’

  They went inside. There were two bedrooms, the spare one being the nearer to the front door. Dobson-Flint had dropped his keys into a shallow pewter dish which stood on a console table and which already contained another bunch of keys and car keys attached to a fob.

  ‘Are you a heavy sleeper, Mr Dobson-Flint?’ Burden asked.

  ‘I succeed in sleeping through some of the worst traffic noise in London, so I should say yes, I am.’

  There was nothing else of interest to see. Wexford said, ‘I suppose Mr and Mrs Knighton were a happy couple?’

  He didn’t expect a frank answer but he wanted to see just what sort of answer he would get. Dobson-Flint replied with a kind of forced impatient enthusiasm.

  ‘Oh, absolutely devoted. They simply adored each other. The Knightons were what is generally called a very united family. Until this fearful tragedy struck them Mr and Mrs Knighton lived for each other. I can’t imagine either of them ever having had eyes for anyone else.’

  He refused Wexford’s offer of a lift back and departed in a taxi, leaving them in the street outside his front door.

  Wexford said thoughtfully, ‘He doth protest too much.’

  ‘About the Knightons’ mutual devotion, do you mean?’ asked Burden.

  ‘That was a strange remark. “I can’t imagine either of them ever having had eyes for anyone else.” It’s not the sort of thing that would come to mind at all when considering the domestic happiness or otherwise of people in their sixties. Why did he mention it? It’s a funny thing, Mike, but I keep having this feeling that what’s happened in this case, and maybe is happening, ought to be to people thirty years younger than the Knightons. I’ve got a feeling this was a crime of passion, yet any less likely candidate for passion than Mrs Knighton I’ve yet to see.’

  ‘And that bald-headed stuffed shirt feels it too?’

  ‘Harsh words, Mike. But maybe, yes, I think he does. Knighton could have gone back to Sussex during the night, shot his wife and returned here hours before Dobson-Flint started fiddling about with his Lapsang-Souchong.’

  ‘How? There’s no train between the twelve fifty-five and the six-forty.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be by train. In fact, the train would have been no use to him since he couldn’t have got from Kingsmarkham to Sewingbury at the other end. But he could have done it by car.’

  ‘We know he didn’t. His car was in the garage at Thatto Hall Farm.’

  ‘Listen, Mike. What was he doing between getting to Victoria at four-fifteen and arriving at Hyde Park Gardens at ten past five? Fifty-five minutes to get from Victoria to Lancaster Gate? There’s something he could have been doing. He could have been in a local car hire place, renting a car, and returning it next morning.

  ‘All he had to do was book himself a car by phone and turn up to collect it at four forty-five, drive it here and leave it on a meter. It looks to me as if the whole of this area is metered, I noticed as we were coming along. Metering ends at six-thirty so he’d only have to put his money in for an hour and a half. After Dobson-Flint’s gone to bed he leaves the flat, helping himself to a key out of that pewter plate thing, retrieves his hired car and drives to Sewingbury—an hour’s drive at that time of night. He lets himself in by the front door, awakens Adela and shoots her, takes her jewel case. Then he cuts the pane out of the loo window. On his way back to the road where he has left the car parked on the verge he discards the jewellery and the case. An hour later he’s back in Hyde Park Gardens and it’s still only three-thirty. How about that?’

  ‘He was taking a hell of a risk,’ said Burden. ‘Suppose Dobson-Flint had gone into his room?’

  ‘Never! Can you imagine it? Not those sort of people, they never would. Their sons might, yes, but never those two. Dobson-Flint would have gone in there only if Knighton had cried out and even then he’d have hesitated.’

  ‘By the way,’ said Burden as they got back into the car, ‘his son lives in London. Why couldn’t he stay with him?’

  ‘Roderick Knighton and his wife live in Mill Hill, quite a way out. Too far out if you’re depending on public transport and taxis. Or I think that’s what Knighton would say. The truth may of course be that
if he was planning a small hours murder trip the Bayswater Road is a good deal nearer to Sussex.’

  Men were searching for the weapon in the grass verges, the hedges, the fields, the footpaths, even wading in the Kingsbrook itself where it flowed through Thatto Vale. Wexford asked himself if the gun had belonged to Knighton. A retired counsel who had been at the criminal bar might well know where to acquire an automatic. The little gun, it had been discovered from a hairline scratch on the bullet that had killed Adela Knighton, had a tiny pinhead-sized protuberance, a minute wart-like flaw, on the inside of its barrel.

  It was a damp chilly day, rather colder than usual for the time of year and darker than usual for the time of day. The surrounding hills and woodland were blanketed in grey mist. The gun might be hidden anywhere in there, a tiny metal tube in innumerable tons of earth, leaf mould and water. Or it might be cleaned and polished, folded in a soft cloth, put away in a drawer. He went up the drive to Thatto Hall Farm.

  Julian Knighton with his wife Barbara had arrived that morning from America. Julian was shortish, thick-set like his mother, moon-faced like his mother, perhaps forty years old. The Knightons had evidently belonged in that category of couples who, like the Queen, had had two families. The first pair, the two older sons, must surely have been about ten and eight years old before Jennifer was born, and then they had had another son two or three years later, the still absent Colum.

  Adam Knighton looked ill, stricken with suffering. His face was drawn in under the cheekbones. Wexford remembered how astounded he had been, how disbelieving, when first told of his wife’s death. Only a brilliant actor could have feigned that. He looked at the Chief Inspector with sunken haunted eyes. The pregnant Mrs Norris reclined in an armchair with her feet up. Barbara Knighton was drinking something from a glass that might have been iced tea or heavily diluted whisky. Her husband presented Wexford with a theory.