Superfluous Women

by Carola Dunn

  He was the same scruffy, wild-haired chap Alec had first met at university, in Manchester. The son of a couple of Lancashire cotton-mill workers, he had inherited the determination that had enabled them to survive childhood labour in the “dark, Satanic mills,” and move up to owning a corner shop in the city.

  In Eric’s case, he had made good use of the help of a teacher who recognised his abilities. He had won a scholarship to Manchester Grammar, where his affinity for languages from classical Greek and Latin to modern French and German emerged. A second full scholarship, to the Victoria University of Manchester, added several more languages to his repertoire.

  That was sufficient to overcome the FO’s built-in bias toward Oxford and Cambridge graduates. Bragg started as a lowly translator, acquired a fair understanding of another couple of dozen languages, and made himself indispensable despite his humble background, farouche appearance, and ineradicable Mancunian accent.

  “Robert Gray?” he said now. “Yes, I know Bob.”

  “You do? I didn’t expect that.”

  “He’s a colleague, and a friend. When he’s home, we work together, do a bit of fencing, go out together for a pint now and then. He can speak colloquially more languages than I can read. No degree. He’s a rolling stone, and he picks up the lingo like a native, wherever he goes.”

  “Which is what I’m interested in: where he goes, or rather, where he’s been. I hoped you could get the information I need from whoever would have it, but perhaps you already know his movements?”

  “No one knows Bob’s movements. He’s … sort of extracurricular.”

  “A spy?”

  “A seeker of information. Like you. What are these enquiries of yours about? I don’t see how he can be in serious trouble. In this country. He doesn’t spend enough time here, especially since his father remarried. It is an official criminal case, I presume?”

  “Sort of extracurricular, but that’s beside the point. It’s a murder case. The victim is Robert Gray’s stepmother.”

  “Oh lord!”

  “You said he has avoided England since his father married her.”

  “Yes. He referred to her as ‘the witch.’ Sometimes with a different initial letter, depending on the company. When he was in England on leave, he’d meet his father in town rather than risk coming face-to-face with her.”

  “Why did he so dislike her?”

  “He never really talked about her—just the odd mention. The usual thing, I suppose: She was on the hunt for a wealthy husband, and old Gray was the sap she got her claws into.”

  “If she made him happy…?”

  “D’you know, I’d swear Bob never talked about his stepma, but I definitely have the impression that she made his pa very unhappy. Don’t quote me on that.”

  “I won’t, but it adds to the opinions we’ve heard from others. When did you last see Robert Gray? You know his father died in April?”

  “April, was it? Bob turned up in June, a couple of months later. He’d been in—well, I’d better not say, even to a high-up copper. It was several weeks before the news reached him, and it took him several weeks to get home.”

  “You saw him then?”

  “Oh yes, he was in and out of the office for a fortnight or so, though he came back only to see his lawyer.”

  “Damn, I knew there was something else we should have asked Ainsley. Lawyers have a way of getting rid of unwelcome visitors.”

  “If Ainsley’s in Beaconsfield, Bob didn’t see him. He communicated through his own lawyer, here in town.”

  “But he was in England for a couple of weeks in June. You’re certain he left the country afterwards?”

  “Absolutely certain. He sent in a despatch, via the British consul in—somewhere in the Middle East, in September? It’s dated in his own atrocious handwriting, and the date of the consul’s seal is two days later. I can’t remember exactly; I can find out for you. Of course, that doesn’t mean he couldn’t be back in England by now. In fact, he is. But he came home with one of those eye conditions common in that part of the world. To my knowledge, he’s been under a doctor’s care with his eyes bandaged for the past ten days.”

  “You could have told me right away!”

  Bragg grinned. “I could have. Just prolonging the pleasure of your company, mate. You see, though: He couldn’t have done in the witch.”

  “That rather depends, doesn’t it, on when the witch was killed.”

  “Oho, so that’s it! Not in the last ten days, I take it. When?”

  “We can’t be sure of the exact date. Be a good chap and get me the date when he wrote that despatch.”

  “All right, but I’ll have to go and beg on bended knee. Coffee?”

  “Is it any good?”

  “Oh yes, none of your police canteen muck for us. I’ll be back shortly.” He sauntered out. Alec, remembering him as a brisk mover, assumed he was aping the languid manners of the well-bred young men whose families had pushed them into the FO for want of anything better to do with them.

  The rattle of the typewriter in the outer room stopped and Alec heard his friend ask his secretary to bring coffee for two. He addressed her as “chuck,” not what she would be accustomed to from those languid young men. The Mancunian endearment didn’t hold any significance; Bragg addressed thus any female less than a decade older than he was, and the secretary was about Daisy’s age.

  She brought in a tray with two cups of coffee and a plate of Marie biscuits. Having set it on the desk, she lingered. “I hope Mr. Bragg isn’t going to be too long. His coffee will get cold, as usual.”

  “As usual?”

  “He gets so wrapped up in his work, he often doesn’t even notice I’ve brought it. He’d never eat any lunch, either, if I didn’t remind him.”

  “How long have you worked for him?”

  “Since May. He’s such a hard worker, he keeps me busy, but that’s better than being bored. And lots of what I type is pretty interesting. Top secret, of course. I’m not allowed to talk about it at all, not to anyone. Have you known Mr. Bragg a long time?”

  “About twenty years.”

  She nodded. “I thought you must be an old friend. All the same, it’s lucky you arrived first thing. He never sees anyone without an appointment, even his boss. He says interruptions pull him out of whatever language he’s translating and then he wastes time switching back from thinking in English. Part of my job is keeping people out. Well, I’d better get back to work. I’m sure he won’t keep you waiting, sir.”

  Alec was less sure, given Bragg’s mention of begging on bended knee, often a lengthy process. However, he needed the information. It was worth waiting a few minutes in the hope of crossing a suspect off the list, especially the suspect with by far the best motive.

  He wondered how Underwood and Ernie Piper were getting on, and whether Tom had come up with anything of interest.

  Bragg returned to cold, scummed coffee, as predicted. He pushed it aside without appearing to notice it, and sat down. “The sixth of September,” he announced. “How does that fit in with your murder?”

  “Damn. I’ll have to check travel times, but I’d say it leaves the question open. Depends exactly where the despatch came from, of course.”

  “Which I can’t tell you.”

  “And damn again! Would you tell me if it meant saving Gray from the hangman?”

  “Ask me again if you’re about to arrest him.”

  “I shall. How is he, apart from his eyes? Not suffering from a raging—or raving—fever, I trust.”

  “Not when I called to see him. You’re going to talk to him?”

  “Of course. He’s the closest relative, if only by marriage, to a murder victim. In fact, the only relative we’re aware of. If there are others, he may be able to direct us to them. In any case, on her death, he becomes a wealthy man.”

  “He never mentioned that. Did he know?”

  “So his father’s lawyer says.”

  Bragg was sil
ent for a moment, then sighed. “All right, I see your point. At least tell me you have other suspects?”

  “A couple. But none with half as good a reason for wanting the woman dead as Robert Gray.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Gray’s flat was in a large, Edwardian redbrick block on Marylebone Road. Its many numbered entrances were set back between pairs of bay windows rising the height of the first three storeys. By the looks of the place, Albert hadn’t stinted his son in the matter of accommodation.

  As he climbed the stairs, Alec reflected that dates and the distance travelled didn’t tell the whole story. It was unlikely that Gray should have somehow found out that his stepmother was moving and therefore might not be missed for some time—unless the lawyer, Ainsley, had written to him. Another question to put to the irritable little man.

  Even then, to travel all that way hoping that Judith Gray was still in Beaconsfield was to draw the bow at a very long shot.

  Yet the man was a spy, presumably used improvising on the spur of the moment and to taking chances for far less personal reward than a sizable fortune. If circumstances did not conspire to favour him, he might have reckoned to be able to trace Judith and rid himself of her in her new abode.

  Alec reached the third floor. The passage leading back into the depths of the building was ill-lit, narrow, but carpeted and clean. Several doors opened onto it, each bearing a letter. He found Gray’s and pressed the electric bell.

  Nothing happened.

  He waited a minute, then rang again. This time, he heard a male voice within calling, though he couldn’t make out the words. Again he waited. No footsteps, but his patience was rewarded by the click of the Chubb lock. The door opened to reveal a diminutive cleaning lady in carpet slippers and a flowery overall.

  “Was you wanting Mr. Gray?”

  “Yes, please. I’d like a word with him. Would you give him my card, madam?”

  “Ho, madam, is it? I’ll give him your card but it won’t do ’im a lot of good, seeing he’s got a bandage over his eyes.”

  “Perhaps you could read it to him.”

  “Forgot me glasses, di’n’t I.”

  “Tell him I’m a police officer.”

  “Who is it, Mrs. Dee?”

  “A rozzer, sir,” she called back. “Leastways so he says, but he ain’t wearing no uniform.”

  “Even without his uniform, I daresay he’ll relieve the tedium. Show him in.”

  The voice was educated, though not, Alec thought, at the best schools. Gray and Eric Bragg must have been drawn to each other because neither sported a Public School tie or accent.

  Mrs. Dee—Mrs. D.?—stepped back and Alec followed her over the threshold. On his right a door stood open to a pleasant, masculine sitting room, well-lit by the tall bay windows. The charwoman led him the other way, down a corridor even narrower than that at the stair top, its left wall being shared with the common passage beyond; a comfortable flat, but not extensive.

  The next door was ajar. She tapped and pushed it open. “’Ere ’e is, sir.”

  The room was darkened, illumined only by a lamp concealed behind a folding screen, and what little light came from the corridor. Alec made out a bed against the far wall, with a man’s figure lying on his back on top of the counterpane. His upper face was hidden by a folded napkin.

  “Mr. Robert Gray?”

  “That’s me. You’re the ‘rozzer,’ I take it.”

  “Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher. May I come in?”

  “Please. You’ll excuse me for not getting up: doctor’s orders. Find a seat and tell me what a high-up copper wants with me. I’m already intrigued. It’s as boring as hell—Don’t you think hell must be the ultimate eternal boredom? None of those raging fires!”

  “It’s certainly a possibility, if you believe in hell.”

  “Not really,” Gray admitted. “All the same, the tedium is driving me mad. I have to lie here for a couple of hours twice a day, with this damn lotion-soaked cloth swathing my eyes, and I’m not allowed out of the flat at all for fear of getting grit in the irritable orbs.”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “Keratoconjunctivitis. Aren’t you sorry you asked? It’s quite a common ailment in the Middle East—dry air and blowing sand. I suppose you know I’ve been in the Middle East.”

  “Eric Bragg told me.”

  “Eric!”

  “He didn’t specify where.”

  “Then neither shall I. Is this an interrogation?”

  “I have some questions I’d like to put to you. You’re at liberty to refuse to answer, though your refusal will be noted and may—”

  “And may be used in evidence against me?” He sounded amused. “What am I supposed to have done? Not a traffic accident, I assume!”

  “Rather more serious. Before I explain, would you mind telling me when you reached England?”

  “About ten days ago. The fifth, I think. I was rushed straight to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, in case my eyes were infectious. Which, I’m thankful to say, they are not.”

  “Was your passport stamped?”

  “I’ve no idea. At that point, I couldn’t see at all. My eyes were bandaged very thoroughly whenever there was the slightest chance of light reaching them.”

  “How did you manage?”

  “I can’t tell you how I reached a consulate in a port city, nor which city, come to that. But they had someone help me aboard, and then the steward took good care of me. The purser had one of the crew deliver me to the passport people, who sent me to the hospital.”

  “We’ll check with the hospital.”

  “I wasn’t travelling under my own name,” Gray said dryly. “As I arrived under the auspices of a passport official, I was admitted…”

  Alec sighed. “I suppose, in your profession, you have several passports.”

  The man on the bed grinned, an odd sight with the cloth hiding the rest of his face. “And they’ve all been turned in to the FO pending my next assignment.”

  Abandoning that line of questioning as unprofitable—after all, he didn’t really need to know about Gray’s most recent arrival—Alec asked, “And your previous trip home? When was that?”

  The spy’s mouth hardened. “June. As soon as I heard of my father’s death in April. I still can’t believe your lot didn’t think there was anything fishy about it.”

  “‘Our lot’ asked for an inquest, even though Albert Gray’s doctor said he died of a heart attack that was not unexpected, in view of his health. The coroner’s jury ruled his death natural. In the light of the verdict, the police had no grounds on which to proceed. What grounds have you for suspicion?”

  “What grounds had the police for requesting an inquest?” he parried.

  “Nothing but gossip. The ‘better safe than sorry’ principle. People were saying Mrs. Gray fed him arsenic. That always resounds in the public’s imagination, but there were no symptoms of arsenic poisoning and no significant trace in the body. He had a weak heart. You knew that?”

  “Yes. He was taking some sort of pills that kept it beating.”

  “The other prevalent rumour was that she’d substituted dummy pills—difficult, if not impossible, to prove.”

  “It didn’t take rumour to make me suspicious. The bitch he married led him a dog’s life.”

  The pun was unintentional, Alec thought, certainly not intended to amuse. “Why did he marry her?”

  “He missed my mother. They’d hardly been apart for a day all their lives. Even as children, they’d grown up in the same street. And he was lonely. I was away too much.”

  “Your stepmother was very much his junior.”

  “But reaching the age when she’d begin to be regarded as a spinster, not a ‘Bright Young Thing.’” His voice was full of scorn. “She was too desperate for a husband to be particular. Except where money was concerned. She wouldn’t have married a poor man. She had expensive tastes, had my stepmama.”

  “So I’
ve heard.”

  Gray’s grimace was wolfish. “What she hadn’t realised was that Dad grew up quite poor and he regarded extravagance as a sin. He didn’t stint on clothes or housekeeping, but he refused to dissipate what he’d worked so hard for to buy useless baubles or expensive cars, let alone to throw house parties for people he didn’t even like.”

  “You disliked and despised her.”

  “From the moment we met. That was several months after the wedding, because I’d been out of touch. She’d cajoled him into tying the knot as soon as possible, though Dad said he wanted to wait for my return. I could have saved him if I’d been here.”

  “I doubt it. Or if you had somehow prevented the marriage, he would always have resented your interference. You remained on good terms?”

  “Oh yes. He was still infatuated with her, but it was too late to open his eyes, so I was polite to her in his presence.”

  “What made you dislike her instantly?”

  “I suppose it was her manner towards him,” Gray said slowly. “There was nothing I could pin down. I tried to persuade myself it was the instinctive mistrust that’s essential to my job. Yours, too, I would imagine. Then I overheard her talking to a friend about my father and that dispelled all doubt. She despised him, and I hated her.”

  “So you ceased to be polite?”

  “I ceased to meet her. Dad came here, or we went to my club. He was completely disillusioned by the next time I was in England. Why am I blabbing to you?”

  To deflect suspicion? Or because he didn’t know Judith was dead? “You tell me.”

  Gray was silent for a moment. “I haven’t been able to talk about it to anyone else. No one else has shown any interest, of course. Maybe some of his friends in Beaconsfield cared, but I don’t know them. My parents moved there long after I’d left home.” He paused. “Partly, it’s because I can’t see you. Damn my eyes!”