Hung in the Balance (Simpson & Lowe Detective series Book 1)

by Ormerod, Roger

  But I tossed my hair free, as much as it will toss. There had been more than a hint of conscience in the feeling that I ought to be at the funeral. Now I was free of it.

  I dressed rapidly, choosing the slacks and the white blouse with the broderie anglaise collar. No jewellery. I was reaching for my official image, for the woman I had been for the past four years, alive, efficient I hoped, and sufficiently relaxed to become absorbed by The Carlton’s atmosphere.

  I closed the door behind me and walked quickly down the stairs, my step light, my back straight. Image, my father had said. Present an image.

  They remembered me. Paul, the head waiter, allowed his eyes to brighten at the sight of me. The snap of his fingers was even more imperious than usual, and Henry led me over to the small table in the corner which, they recalled, I favoured.

  ‘Mrs Tonkin…it’s been too long. You are well?’

  ‘Thank you, Henry, yes I’m well. And you?’

  He smiled. ‘My feet, always my feet. Now…we have a nice cut of lamb this evening…’

  His easy acceptance and obvious friendliness were all I needed to restore the last iota of my self-confidence. I could afford to nod to myself. I was ready. Suicide indeed! I’d have a few things to say about that, to start with.

  Graham could never have taken his own life. Initially, there’d been a catch in my heart when Harvey had said that. The first thought had been that he’d never got over my sudden departure from his life, that he’d grieved, become depressed. But no, not Graham, he’d been too buoyant, and the thought, in any event, was too vainglorious. There had, I remembered, been mention of another woman. Anna — wasn’t it? For the past two to three years! That seemed to indicate a certain permanency, and either Graham had ceased his womanizing, or this Anna was made of more flexible steel than I’d been. Graham would have forgotten me — thrust me into his past.

  I wondered idly whether Anna had encountered Graham’s insane jealousy, which, now I came to consider it dispassionately, had been the basic reason for my feelings having gradually slipped from love to dislike. Strange, too, was that jealousy, now that I could look at it calmly and objectively. He’d had no reason, considering his own activities. And considering my own lack of them.

  Come to think of it, I’d never actually seen one of his women. Perhaps this Anna had been the only one, even in those days, though in that event she had run through a whole gamut of scents and a dozen shades of lipstick.

  Amused at the thought, I raised my head, trying to catch Henry’s eye. This evening, the evening of release, deserved a wine.

  For the third time I realized that I was being discreetly observed by a young couple two tables away. The woman was facing me, a blonde and vivacious young woman given to gestures and the flashing of her large eyes. Her face was a perfect oval, her mouth wide, her chin determined. The man she was with had his back to me, but I realized I could see his face in a mirror on the far wall, could catch his eyes on me as I did so. He, too, was fair, but his hair was a mass of curls, obviously styled, and his face was a similar oval, but with a longer chin. Handsome, I decided, in a heavy, somewhat aggressive way. Not my type, oh definitely not my type.

  Henry arrived at my shoulder silently. I was surprised to be glad of the chance to look away from that table. He advised a hock. I agreed.

  I had forgotten about the couple by the time I’d finished the pudding, and was intrigued to see the man get to his feet, turn, and walk over to me. He stood smiling with no more than his lips. I knew that expression. He’d been thrust into an action of which he didn’t approve.

  ‘You’ll be Graham’s ex-wife,’ he said, his voice even and only the curl of his lip suggesting an insult. ‘We wondered if you’d care to join us for a liqueur.’

  Oh how I loved that ‘ex-wife’. ‘If I knew you…’ I could match his smile, and wasn’t going to encourage him. This was a man secure in the knowledge that he could charm apples down from the trees, but my hair wasn’t golden and I was far from delicious.

  He said, making sure I realized it wasn’t his own idea by any means, ‘Anna, my sister, wishes to meet you. I am Dennis Treadgold.’

  ‘Ah yes. I see. Then she is Anna Treadgold. I must certainly meet her. We have so much in common.’

  I caught Henry’s eye and indicated I was switching tables, then I moved ahead of Dennis to meet Graham’s live-in woman.

  All the way to the table I held the smile, determined that everything would be friendly.

  2

  I sat opposite Anna. Dennis held a chair for me in a way that suggested a forced politeness, in some way degrading.

  Inclining my head towards Anna, I said, ‘I’m Philipa Lowe.’

  This was deliberately taking the advantage, and robbing Dennis of what had been an intentional insult. She realized it, and smiled thinly.

  ‘And you’re his sister Anna,’ I went on. ‘I’ve heard about you.’

  Her eyes narrowed fractionally, then the smile blossomed, a smile she couldn’t control.

  ‘Yes. I thought we ought to meet. This could be the only chance, if you’re intending to rush back to your very important work…’ She left it hanging. The smile was still there, but the voice had carried a sour criticism.

  Suddenly, I saw the situation as hilariously funny with its mock formality. Perhaps I was tired, slightly hysterical. So I used my ridiculous inverted humour, which I’d taught myself to suppress in New York, where they’re all direct and say what they mean, not the opposite.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said solemnly, ‘that we ought to be seen meeting like this.’

  She lifted her chin. ‘I don’t see why not.’ It was a challenge.

  So I’d made a mistake. I floundered on, trying to retrieve it. ‘Of course, we live in that sort of world these days. And no — I’m not intending to rush away.’ I said this as pleasantly as I could, but already there were barriers behind Anna’s eyes.

  It was easy to see they were brother and sister now. They had the same eyes, intense and searching, the same line to their mouths, a greediness, a possessiveness. She was probably the elder, in her late twenties I guessed. I would be eight years her senior, perhaps, but Dennis was not much more than twenty-five.

  ‘I’m surprised you came to the funeral at all,’ said Anna coolly. ‘Not much point, really, and it’s a hell of a long way from New York.’

  ‘Oh, I happened to be in Europe. A couple of hours. No trouble, really.’

  ‘Then it’ll be no trouble to go back there,’ she suggested gently.

  ‘There’re things to be done and settled,’ I told her, raising my head to Henry, who’d appeared at my shoulder. ‘Benedictine, I think, Henry.’ Then, as he went away, I continued, ‘I’m not really satisfied about his death.’ With this, I was feeling out her opinions.

  Dennis flicked an angry glance at me, then looked quickly down at his hands. His voice was toneless. ‘Do you have to be satisfied?’

  He was determined to be unpleasant, poised for attack at the least sign of an excuse. I couldn’t let him get away with that. ‘Well yes, I do, Dennis,’ I told him, with a smile, softening it a little. ‘Especially as you seem to be so satisfied.’

  His head jerked up. ‘What the hell —’

  Anna cut him short by tapping his knuckles with a spoon. Dennis hadn’t learned patience; she had brought it to a fine art.

  ‘There was an inquest, you know. The verdict was suicide. The facts were definite.’

  ‘And was his mind disturbed?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘That’s the phrase they usually use. While the balance of the mind was disturbed. You’re the one who’d know, Anna. Was it? Was he depressed with his life? Was he completely happy with your…partnership?’ The hesitation between the words was to indicate that I’d searched for a polite way of putting it. Or it could be construed otherwise.

  Anna refused to rise to it. The subject was Graham, and suddenly I was in the background. She gazed beyond my right
shoulder dreamily, her eyes, I could have sworn, moist with sentiment.

  ‘We were gloriously and fabulously happy.’

  Dennis made an angry sound.

  ‘Some reason must’ve been given to the coroner,’ I persisted, pressing on now that emotion seemed to possess her.

  ‘Certainly not the state of his mind,’ Anna declared. Her voice softened to a honey tone. ‘That might’ve been the case when he lived with you — but not since he’s lived with me.’

  ‘Then what?’ I sipped the liqueur. A pity I couldn’t savour and enjoy it. ‘Money troubles…’

  ‘We got by.’

  ‘Women troubles?’ I asked gently, having had more than my own share.

  And Anna put back her head, displaying a smooth curve of beautiful throat, and gave a soft, gurgling laugh.

  ‘Other women? Oh, my dear, how naïve! I gave him no time for other women. And that…’ She leaned forward confidentially, and though she lowered her voice it did little to disguise the bite in it. ‘…that was where you went all wrong. Oh, don’t worry, I know all about it. He stayed at home and you went to work. You must have been crazy!’

  ‘Damned farcical,’ put in Dennis, nodding.

  ‘A woman’s place…’ I began heatedly, then bit down on it before I played straight into their hands. ‘You don’t look that old-fashioned, Dennis.’

  Anna cut in on this dialogue, annoyed that she’d lost the flow of her comments. ‘You never really understood him, that was your trouble. Graham had to be led. Driven, if you want it like that. His mind had to grab hold of something. That’s what I gave him. We were…are…hell, I don’t know what’s correct. Anyway, it was how we met, both of us interested in art. So when I went to live with him, that was what we did. We painted. He rarely left the house alone. We did everything together. And d’you know, he sold the things. He was good, let me tell you. Left me miles behind. Once he got going, once he saw it as a challenge, there was no stopping him.’

  ‘I can understand that.’ I had no pretensions towards an artistic life, but I knew that Graham’s interests had ranged over a vast number of subjects. ‘You say you did everything together?’

  ‘Yes. We were never apart.’ There was something defensive in her voice.

  ‘Out in the car — did you do the driving?’

  ‘You know he didn’t drive.’

  ‘Couldn’t. Not when I knew him.’

  ‘He drove well enough to go over that cliff,’ Anna said, acid in her voice.

  ‘So they say.’ I ran a finger round the rim of my glass, then looked up quickly. ‘Tell me, who identified the body? You, I suppose.’

  She grimaced in distaste. ‘Who else? Of course me.’

  ‘And there was no doubt?’

  ‘Now what the devil’s this?’ put in Dennis, impatience in his voice, hating to be excluded by two women.

  But I didn’t take my eyes from Anna’s face. ‘Was there?’

  Anna’s voice became deadened by the effort of her control. ‘There was no doubt.’

  I lifted a hand in a gesture of dismissal, smiling ruefully. ‘Oh… I do apologize. So stupid of me. Of course, you wouldn’t need to look too closely.’

  ‘Look at what?’ Anna’s eyes were empty and dark with incomprehension. She wasn’t very intelligent, I decided.

  ‘In the morgue. Look too closely at his body, I meant. I didn’t make myself clear. You wouldn’t need more than a glance.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she whispered.

  ‘Well, you said it yourself. You were never apart. You drove the car. So you must have driven him there, to the cliff top at Corry’s Head.’ I looked down and spoke very quietly. ‘And watched him do it, perhaps.’

  There was the shortest of silences, but it was a deep, cold silence, like a crevasse in an iceberg. Then Dennis’s chair moved as he got half to his feet. Anna snapped, ‘No!’ Then she was still, but looking up I could see the menace in her eyes.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said in a babyish voice, as though close to tears from an undeserved reproach, ‘why you have to insult me like this. To say such a thing! He said it himself, Graham did. You’re a vicious person, Philipa Lowe. That’s what he said, and I can see now what he meant.’

  If not intelligent, then very quick, I thought. And a wonderful actress. I didn’t dare to allow myself to be distracted at the thought that I was vicious.

  ‘Then who drove him there, if not you?’

  ‘How do I know that?’

  ‘If you were always together —’

  ‘It was a saying,’ Anna whispered. ‘Of course not. Not every minute.’

  ‘So — that night…it was night, I suppose? It’s a thing to do in the dark.’

  ‘What,’ demanded Dennis heavily, ‘is this thing you’re talking about?’

  I turned to face him squarely. ‘Why, murder, of course. If he was driven there, as he must’ve been, then whether it was suicide or not, he was driven to it. That is murder. If he was simply left there to do the last bit himself, then it’d still be murder.’ I nodded, confirming that as a legal precept, though I’d invented it on the spot.

  If it had not been for the tension clouding the conversation, I would not have mentioned murder aloud, would perhaps not even have acknowledged it to myself. But the idea had been hovering in the far reaches of my mind. Suicide, for Graham, was an impossible conception. So what else but murder? Accident? In such circumstances? I couldn’t visualize it.

  ‘You do see the obvious conclusion?’ I asked.

  Dennis got to his feet, the blood high on his cheeks. Anna, rising more slowly, gripped his wrist firmly, fiercely. She leaned forward over the table.

  ‘I saw the body, Ms Lowe,’ she told me, her voice shaking now with genuine emotion. ‘I saw what he’d been wearing. Every item. It was all his. But his face…ha! …you want to try it. Try looking at that. His face was smashed in, Ms Lowe.’ She got a venomous hiss into the Ms. ‘Try it some time. Identify that, if you could.’

  They left abruptly, rapidly, Anna thrusting her brother in front. I sat very still, staring straight ahead, cradling the glass in both hands before my face.

  I’d been using a technique we often tried in our business, Cornel and I, though then we worked as a team. Search out a weakness in our clients, who had such pretensions to higher office, and hammer at it, thrusting towards a break in their self-control. These were strong people, men and women already toughened in the forge of high responsibility. They were expected, therefore, to be able to sail through it smoothly. But it had been unfair to unleash such a practised force on those two.

  I realized I felt no pride. The encounter had not been satisfying, tending rather to degrade me towards Anna’s description as vicious. I had been too poised, too defensive. But the fact remained that I’d snapped back at them without my normal and cherished control. They, too, would be suffering from the shock of Graham’s death, and Anna might, indeed, be concerned about her own future. Had she been worrying that she would lost the cottage? But surely Graham would have bequeathed that to her.

  Oh hell, I thought, I’ll have to see her again and apologize. Or something. Animosity wasn’t going to help in such an awkward situation.

  I rose to make my way to my room. My room! I’d barely ruffled its placid and solid composure. Was I going to be forced into sitting in there all evening? Or go down to the bar and waste away a couple of hours? I felt restless. Really only relaxed when fully occupied, I was nudged by the need for movement and action.

  I put on a short camel hair coat and threw a silk scarf round my neck, found shoes which, if not actually designed for walking, at least had reasonably low heels, and went out to look around the town. I carried no bag, no money. It was a luxury, this freedom of action and choice. In New York it would’ve been unthinkable simply to walk the streets. On a bleak and damp November evening, hands thrust in my pockets and re-living Penley, it was feasible.

  The town was almost small enough to b
e called a village. It was only in the past few years that it had begun to spread outwards in avenues and building estates. The centre still clung to a village atmosphere, though here too, as Harvey had said, there had been changes. The chain stores were buying up property. The frontages were changing their faces, modern plate glass substituted for bow windows with tiny, obscured panes. The café where Graham and I had so often eaten, quietly in a corner seat, was now a Wimpy bar. The chemist’s shop, which had flaunted huge bottles of brightly coloured liquids to shadow the interior, was now a Boots, the pharmacy section only a corner in the extended floor space.

  And all were closed, all with dim interior lights, all austerely rejecting me.

  The old bridge was blocked off for repairs and rejuvenation. They’d put a new bridge to accommodate the flow from the ring road, I’d heard.

  It had lost its charm. I should have phoned Harvey, and he’d have asked me round to his place for an evening of chess. But would I have been able to prevent myself from talking, endlessly, about Graham? Of course not. Anna’s accusation still stung, somewhere inside my mind. In what way had Graham found me vicious? Was it perhaps an invention of Anna’s?

  Abruptly I stopped and turned, the bustle, warmth and companionship of The Carlton’s bar suddenly beckoning.

  The man thirty yards behind me barely hesitated in his stride. Then he came on, and as he passed me he raised his tweed hat and murmured, ‘Good night’. Raised his hat! Heavens, how quaintly old-worldly. Yet there’d been a glimpse of white in his hair as the streetlight caught it, and his smile had been inoffensive. He was perhaps old enough to afford, and enjoy, courtly gestures.