by Tony Cape
“He didn’t do it, Mr. Smailes. Simon. He didn’t kill himself. He had no reason,” he began immediately.
“Why do you say that?” said Smailes evenly, reaching for his notebook.
“He was fine. He was okay last night. A bit quiet, that’s all. Wouldn’t he have told us if he was freaking out?” Smailes noticed the uncertainty in his voice, the contrast to the vehemence of his first statement.
“What happened, please? Last night?”
Allerton’s story emerged in spurts, as the young man’s mood modulated between indignation and disbelief. He would occasionally tug at his long hair and wind it round a forefinger. He avoided looking at Smailes, as if uncomfortable and embarrassed to be talking candidly to a policeman. It was an attitude Smailes had long gotten used to.
Allerton and Lauren Greenwald had met by chance at dinner at the college. He and Lauren were “friends,” he explained. They decided to go to an early movie, a Woody Allen film at the Arts. They had returned to the college around nine thirty, and had decided to look up Simon Bowles, a mutual friend, and get him to go for a drink. It had been Lauren’s idea. She liked to tease Simon, draw him out of his shell.
“How long had you known Simon Bowles?” asked Smailes.
“Oh, years and years. You see, he was a contemporary of my elder brother Hugh at Oundel. They’re both three years older than me. So when I came up to Cambridge, Simon was already here at Meg’s. I’ve known him since I was eight years old.”
“How long have you been a student here?”
“I’m in my third year. Modern languages. German and Russian.”
“And Miss Greenwald. How long have you known her?”
“Lauren? Just this year. She came over from Columbia in September on a Fulbright. She’s American, you know. From New York. That’s where Columbia is. I met her in Simon’s room actually.”
“What is the relationship between the three of you? You say you were friends.”
“That’s right.”
“What was your sexual interrelationship?” He felt Allerton was being obtuse.
“Lauren and I are lovers, off and on. We were both just friends with Simon.” There was no edge in his voice.
“Please go on with your story.”
Giles Allerton seemed to remember the details of the previous night quite vividly. They had stopped in at Simon’s room. He was working at his typewriter when they entered, and seemed annoyed at their intrusion. This was predictable. Simon always liked to pretend that he didn’t like company. But both Allerton and Lauren knew that Simon liked the attention they gave him, the glimpses they brought him of a world outside his books and research.
“Was he an anti-social type? Few friends? How would you describe him?”
“No, no, Simon wasn’t anti-social. He was just shy, and tended to live in his own world. He was really brilliant, you know. Everyone knew it, but he was never condescending or patronizing, and I’m sure he often held back from joining in discussions, you know, because he didn’t want to utterly demolish people’s arguments and make them feel stupid. He could do that quite easily though. I’ve seen it happen.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if he was in the bar, or there were people in his room, and some topic came up that he felt really strongly about, then he wouldn’t hold back.
“He had this really pure, almost shocking intellect. He could take some murky issue and turn his high beam on it, and it would appear completely obvious. I remember him once turning on a guy who was spouting some theory of reincarnation and Simon just let him have it. Quite awesome. Something about the physical laws of continuity and discontinuity. But the interesting thing was, you could tell he really didn’t like doing it. That’s what made him so special. He was basically so modest and kind. He would always rather give you the benefit of the doubt than submit your ideas to his own flawless analysis. I think he valued logic above everything else. But he allowed others to be sloppy about it.”
Allerton returned to his description of the previous night. Bowles had put away the documents he had been working on into a manila folder, and then into his desk drawer. He remained seated at his desk, and Allerton and Lauren sat on the bed. Simon asked them to leave because he was working. He seemed quite serious about it. But Lauren had gotten him to laugh, and he eventually agreed to go for a drink with them.
“Did anything seem unusual about his behavior when you arrived in his room?”
“Not at all. Simon worked all the time. His only recreation was the occasional drink.”
“What about his annoyance when you showed up?”
“Oh, that was real enough. He got quite agitated at first. But then, we’d been through the same scene so many times, we didn’t take him seriously. And then Lauren started him laughing. He really did have a good sense of humor. Then he couldn’t put on the pious scholar act again, so he agreed to come out with us.”
“Did he lock anything—his desk, his files, his room—when you left?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Go on. What happened in the bar?”
“Well, he did seem a bit quiet. I remember a couple of other people joined us and Simon seemed sort of left out of the conversation.”
“You mean he seemed depressed.”
“No, not depressed. Sort of preoccupied. I think he only had a half, maybe two, and then he said he had to go. He left before Lauren and me. Maybe a quarter past ten.”
“Did you think that was strange?”
“A bit. But then, I’m used to Simon. I remember Lauren and I sort of shrugged at each other. Didn’t seem like a big deal.”
Allerton paused and looked blank for a moment, then rounded on the detective in an animated way.
“You see, officer, I know what Simon’s like when he’s depressed. I was here during that dreadful time two years ago, when he ended up in the hospital. His mood last night was nothing like that. Nothing like that.”
“No one said anything to him that might have upset him?”
“No, we were arguing about Woody Allen, mostly, I think. He just seemed disinterested.”
“The former suicide attempt. Did he talk to you about it at the time?”
“A bit, when he was better. I suppose it was his exams, mostly, and his father dying like that. But Simon always maintained that he wasn’t really trying to kill himself. He had these hallucinations, you see, and they scared the hell out of him. He had to jump out of the window because he saw snakes coming in the door.”
“Really?” said Smailes.
Allerton thought for a moment. “Yes. You know, he said to me at the time, that if he really meant to kill himself, he wouldn’t have made a mess of it. He told my brother later—he was closer friends with Hugh than he was with me—that he wouldn’t be able to take it again. That if that kind of delusion ever recurred, he wouldn’t be able to take it. I think to someone with such an impeccably logical mind as Simon, such irrationality was completely terrifying, and utterly shameful. At least, that’s what Hugh told me.”
“Where is your brother now?”
“He’s at Merton College, Oxford, studying divinity. We’re not really very alike, Hugh and I. I called him this morning, when I found out about Simon. He’s terribly upset. You see, Simon had just been over to see him, at the end of last week. Hugh was probably his best friend.”
“Did you know what frame of mind Simon Bowles was in during the period immediately before his death? Had you spent much time with him?”
“No. I hadn’t seen him much, although I ran into him in hall on Saturday. He’d just got back from visiting Hugh. He seemed in good spirits, in fact. A bit mischievous. Simon could be like that. Said he had been sharpening his wits on the whetstone of my brother’s faith. Something like that. See, Simon was a committed atheist, and my brother is quite high church. It’s a wonder they stayed so friendly, because they would argue all the time.”
“How about the research he had been doing
? Had he discussed that with you?”
“The latest stuff? No, he didn’t talk to me much about that kind of thing. I don’t think he saw me quite as an equal, which I’m not, really. I’m not much of an intellectual. Be lucky if I get a degree at all this year, unless I change my ways.” Allerton failed to suppress a smirk.
Smailes remembered the Bletchley note he had found in Bowles’ wallet. “Do you know if Simon Bowles liked to gamble? Did he follow the horses, for instance?”
Allerton snorted. “Good Lord, no. That’s something I would certainly have known about. I’m a bit of a fanatic myself. Like to go over to Newmarket whenever I get the chance. It’s sort of a standing joke that I’m a better student of racing form than any modern language. It must be in my blood, I think. No, in fact, I tried to get Simon to go with me couple of times, but he only laughed. I don’t think Simon would be seen dead at a race course.”
Allerton realized the unwitting poor taste of his remark, and fell silent. Smailes asked casually, “Ever been to Bletchley?”
“Yes, I’ve seen some races there, but not during term time. It’s a bit of a slog over there, when Newmarket’s so close.”
“Mr. Bowles left a typed note. Does that seem unusual to you?”
“A note? I hadn’t thought of that. Does it say why he did it?”
Smailes looked at the young man, but did not respond. A note seemed the first, most obvious thing to expect.
“No, not at all. Simon had terrible, childish handwriting, and was very embarrassed by it. He used his typewriter for everything. That’s exactly what he’d do. What did the note say, officer? Can’t you tell me?”
“It said: ‘They came back. I couldn’t take it. Simon.’”
Allerton looked stunned and passed a hand in front of his eyes. “My God. It must have happened. I can’t believe it,” he whispered. He gave Smailes a look of mute anguish.
“Mr. Allerton, you began by saying that Simon Bowles did not kill himself. Why do you think that, and what do you think caused his death?”
“That must have been it. He must have got frightened by something that recalled that awful time. I suppose that’s why he did it. He used a belt, didn’t he? From a plant hook? God, and we had just been there an hour or two before. Maybe if we’d gone back, after the bar, Simon would still be…”
“How did you know he had hanged himself with a belt? There has been no official report released.”
“Oh, come on, officer. It’s all around the college. The porters, the bedders, everyone’s talking about it. You don’t think… What are you trying to imply?”
“You have not answered my question. You began by saying Simon Bowles did not kill himself. Now you seem to believe he did.”
“Well, I didn’t know about the note, and I thought that he didn’t seem in that frame of mind, that extreme frame of mind. But something must have been going on with him that I didn’t know about, obviously. But look, I’m serious. What do you mean by asking me how I know how he died? You don’t mean…I mean…Jesus Christ…”
Allerton flushed a deep red and tears welled up in his eyes. He put his hand to the bridge of his nose and looked away. Smailes had to admit that if he was dissimulating, he was doing a bloody good job. But he did not counter Allerton’s protestations.
“Where did you go, you and Miss Greenberg, after the bar? Did you go to bed together?”
Allerton’s sudden emotion spilled into anger. “Look, I don’t like your tone, and I don’t like what you’re saying, and if it’s just the same with you, I’ve had enough of this.” He began to rise from his seat.
“Well, did you?”
“No, we bloody well did not, you dirty-minded…” He hesitated, as if unsure of the repercussions of swearing at a policeman. Smailes remained impassive.
“We haven’t been sleeping together recently. We’re friends. I have rooms in Axton Court. Lauren lives in digs, a ways out. I left her at my staircase. I assume she had her bike at the front gate. That’s where she was headed. Look, are we finished, officer?”
“For the time being. Please tell your friend Miss Greenberg that I will see her now.”
“Greenwald. Not Greenberg. Yes. Look, I’m sorry, officer. I just don’t see this is any of your business. And I’m upset. You understand.”
Such breeding. Smailes managed a thin smile as Allerton rose and walked unsteadily out of the room.
Chapter Five
DEREK SMAILES could never remember hearing his father laugh. He patrolled the house as if he were policing a public meeting, and his children and their friends were unruly demonstrators. Not that Derek had many friends apart from Iain Mack, but they went to his house most of the time.
The only intimacy he could ever remember between them was when his father would read Dickens to him at bedtime. It had been a tradition in his own home, which Harry Smailes chose to continue. He seemed to shed the burden of his severity amid the colorful gallery of characters, adopting accents and mannerisms with abandon. Derek saw his father could have been a music hall performer, he came alive with a script in his hands. Derek would lie mesmerized in the grip of Dickens’ imagination long after Denise had fallen asleep, pleading with his father not to stop. His father would close the book with a look of guilty pleasure, and return to the glowering part he had chosen in real life. When Derek Smailes became a teenager, he started to read Dickens himself. It was the start of his interest in serious reading, which was probably the only reason he had ever done well in anything at school.
The only other passion Harry Smailes seemed to feel was for his dogs. Those bloody dogs. It was the first thing he and his mother had done after the funeral. They had sold them both.
Harry Smailes kept and raced whippets. Derek had always thought they were absurd animals, prancing around on their toes with their bug eyes like giant insects. His father kept them in a special wire compound at the bottom of the garden, and the two dogs, Lucky and Lady, won from him a devotion which no human seemed able to. The whole family resented the amount of time he spent talking to them and grooming them, and taking them to weekend races in his specially converted Morris van. As they got older, Denise used to complain to their mother about the amount of time and money he spent on them, and how their yelping kept her awake at night. Their mother would tell her to mind her tongue. Derek accompanied his father to a race only once, and he was appalled by the cruel spectacle of the frantic dogs and the harsh-voiced men in mufflers with whisky on their breath.
Then suddenly at the beginning of May when Derek was eighteen, his father had died, and any real chance of getting into University had been wrecked. The events were blurred in his memory, but he remembered that one morning his father, who had an almost flawless record of attendance in over thirty years of service, had not gone to work. He had been sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea, when Derek had left for school. His father was still at home in the middle of the afternoon when he came back, standing at the bottom of the garden, talking to the dogs.
He had asked his mother, who seemed crippled with anxiety, what was wrong, but she would only say that his father wasn’t well, that she didn’t know what was happening.
Denise, who was engaged at this time and soon to leave home, was more contemptuous.
“What’s he doing, moping around all day? Why isn’t he going to work? Have you called the doctor?” she would persist.
Smailes could not remember if the doctor had visited, but he remembered his Uncle George, who was an inspector at the station, visiting the house to talk to his Dad and holding a worried conference with his mother at the kitchen table.
The next two days he remembered approaching his house with dread after killing time over at his friend Iain’s. His sense of foreboding was overwhelming, and he could not concentrate on his revision, although his exams were only weeks away. His father no longer bothered to dress, emerging in his dressing gown to eat in brooding silence, then walking back up the stairs. He looked very old.
“It’s your Dad. He’s had a heart attack. They’re taking him to the hospital,” she had told him.
He had held on to her in fright. His father had died the same night.
He was shocked by the intensity of his grief, and his feelings of guilt. The examinations arrived, and he did miserably. He felt that by continuously letting himself down, he had let his father down, and that the disappointment had killed him.
Smailes looked back at his notes and was reflecting wryly on Allerton’s concoction of petulance and manners when Lauren Greenwald came angrily into the room. He doubted he would receive any such deference from her. She slouched across the room and slumped into the chair opposite the desk, not looking at him.
“Good afternoon, miss,” Smailes began. “Let me just check the spelling of your name, if I can. Is that G-R-E…”
“Let’s get this over with. What do you want to know?” she interrupted.
“Now, miss, we could start by being a little more polite. Don’t like policemen much, is that it, miss?”
“Cops are cops. I’m pretty sure I don’t like you. Giles told me about your wise ass remarks. I think that stinks. He’s pretty upset. Everyone’s pretty upset. Maybe you don’t appreciate that.”
Smailes studied her. The similarity with Allerton was purely superficial. In background, outlook and attitudes this woman was from a different planet. In his most careful tone he rehearsed the spelling of her name, then looked at her mildly.
“I’m just trying to get the facts, miss. Perhaps you’ll tell me what happened last night, as you recall it.”
Her story tied with Allerton’s pretty well, at most points. In her version, it had been Allerton who had suggested the visit to Bowles’ room. He had been working at his typewriter, and put his work away in the desk after they entered. It had been her doing to persuade Bowles to go with them to the college bar. Her description of his behavior was the same; aloof, preoccupied, but nothing to suggest he might do anything drastic. She had left the bar with Allerton around eleven, left him at his staircase, and cycled home. She had found out about Simon’s death that morning when she picked up her mail after her Wednesday morning supervision at Magdalene College.
