Blood Lines

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Would that be a reference to the novel by Oscar Wilde, sir?’ Atherton asked ponderously, making pretence to lick a pencil.

  Palliser laughed, more naturally. ‘All right, one up to you! Very well, I’ll grant you so much, that I disliked Roger cordially, even though we were once friends, and no, I am not going to tell you why. I admit we had words on Thursday night, but I’m not going to tell you what about, because it’s none of your bloody business. I didn’t kill him, though I half wish I had – there would have been an artistic symmetry to it. Trouble is, he probably would have enjoyed it, and it wasn’t my business to pleasure him, thank God. It’s not my business to sort out your problems, either. In short, I have nothing to say to you about myself – but I will tell you one or two things about Roger that you may not know, and that probably no-one else will tell you. That’s my bargain. How about it?’

  The narrative was long, made longer by the evident fact that Sandal Palliser liked the sound of his own voice. He was a gifted narrator, and though the story was not an edifying one, it at least cleared up one question: the identity of the hidden photographee of the sweater drawer. According to Palliser, Greatrex had had two sisters – Ruth, five years older, and Rachel, two years younger than him. He was fond of them both, but being closer to Rachel in age, was particularly attached to her. As they grew up together, they became inseparable, so much so that when Greatrex was seventeen and due to go up to university, the parents had difficulty in persuading him to leave her. He went unwillingly; and shortly before the end of his third term Rachel became ill with leukaemia. Greatrex came home, missing his exams, and through the summer holidays watched his sister die slowly and in agony. When she was gone, he refused to go back and resit his first-year exams, without which he could not continue at university – for this was St Andrews and the Scottish system – and instead left home and went to London – as far away as he could get, according to Palliser – to seek his fortune. After drifting through the various jobs the unqualified could get in 1960, he found himself in Fleet Street and was lucky enough to catch the eye of the editor of the Daily Express. Thus started his apprenticeship to journalism and his ultimate stardom – and, for reasons yet to be discovered, his bloody death in a loo in the TVC.

  That was also when he first met Palliser, who was working for a publisher and freelancing for the papers when he could get the work; and drawn together by their both having been brought up in Scotland, they became friends.

  ‘I don’t think Roger ever really got over Rachel’s death,’ Palliser said, lighting a Gitane. ‘My mid-morning indulgence.’ He proffered the pack. ‘Do you—?’

  Atherton shook his head, and Slider said, ‘No thanks, not while I’m breathing.’

  Palliser gave a tight smile. ‘A policeman with sense of humour. I thought that wasn’t allowed.’

  ‘Some of us slip through the net. Do go on.’

  ‘Where was I? Oh yes, Rachel’s death and Roger’s obsession.’

  ‘Why do you suppose he hid her picture, if he was so fond of her?’

  ‘He never spoke of her. It was all too painful, I think. It forced its way out in his obsession with young women. Well, that’s what it amounted to – always markedly younger than him, though fortunately they got a bit older as he did. I suppose he was maintaining the differential – the latest one probably seemed to him at fifty the way Rachel had seemed to him at eighteen.’

  ‘You aren’t suggesting his relationship with Rachel was incestuous?’

  ‘Not physically – good God, no – but mentally, isn’t it always? If you love your siblings at all, that is?’

  ‘I’m an only child,’ Slider mentioned.

  ‘Ah, then you’ll have had the Oedipus bit instead,’ Palliser said easily. ‘Roger spent his life trying to find his lost sister in other girls. He couldn’t keep his hands off them. Luckily, most of them didn’t want him to. He was a good-looking sod, sort of like a young Peter Cook. You know, fair, clean-cut, terribly English – if only they knew! He went especially for suburban dollies, “up west” for the evening with stars in their eyes. They had no resistance, and Roger was always one to go with his best stroke. They took him for public school, and he didn’t bother to disillusion them. It was a great pulling line. And then of course the sixties started in earnest, and he couldn’t go wrong. Dear God, what a picnic that was! I remember my father saying the same thing about the Great War – a holiday from the normal rules of decency and decorum. Every now and then, civilisation needs to be let off the leash for a run—’

  Palliser paused at that point, and his face went blank for a space. Writing his next article, Atherton thought, not without envy – a nice little quasi-historical, cod-psycho-social analysis for those who like their thinking done for them. And he’ll get a couple of thousand for it.

  Then the animation faded back in, and Palliser said, less flippantly than hitherto, ‘Except that it was all wrong for Roger. Underneath it all there was a streak of suburban prude, a longing for lace-curtain propriety. He could never be a whole-hearted hedonist – he was too middle-class for that. I think what he really wanted from the dollies was just to be with them, talk to them, maybe pet them a bit. He wanted someone to be a big brother to. But he was a healthy lad, and they were looking for excitement, so it never stopped there. And after a bit I think he forgot why he was doing it – not that he ever knew, not consciously. The ambivalence, the conflict, resolved itself in that streak of dirtiness – not washing his feet, not changing his underpants. He was punishing himself for his inner loathsomeness, you see – and he did like punishment. That was another manifestation of his bourgeois soul. Yes, now I come to think of it,’ his round blue eye, satirical as a parrot’s, roved from Slider to Atherton and back, ‘he was just the sort to commit suicide after all. Gentlemen, I have solved your case for you.’

  Slider let all this pass him by with a policeman’s patience. ‘What happened when he married?’

  ‘Oh, it didn’t make any difference to his habits. Caroline would never make a fuss. That’s the advantage of marrying into the aristocracy.’ An expression of displeasure crossed his face. ‘The Honourable Caroline Fiennes-Marjoribanks – Christ, what a name! Do you know Chirnside? The old boy’s still hanging on to life, God knows how, he must be ninety-something. Sheer stubbornness, I wouldn’t wonder. Stiff upper lip – stiff upper everything, solid wood from the neck up. You know these old Lowland titled families, more English than the English.’

  Slider nodded as if he did. ‘Mrs Greatrex said that they were married in the face of family opposition.’

  Palliser’s expression hardened. ‘Oh, you’ve spoken to her, have you? Well, yes, I suppose you’d have to. Not that she’ll have told you much. Never complain, never explain, that’s the motto of these old families. That’s why they decided in the end to make the best of it and accept Roger. Worst thing they could have done all round, as it turned out.’

  ‘How did it turn out?’ Slider prompted, at his most inscrutable.

  ‘The union wasn’t blest,’ Palliser said harshly, ‘and it turned out to be Roger’s fault – chronically low sperm count. The Chirnsides were devastated – they were longing for grandchildren. I knew the family – grew up in the same part of the country. And then when Caroline did sprog down at last, the kid turned out to be mental.’ Palliser looked away for the first time, turning a blank gaze onto the garden, where a blackbird was ducking and running along the line of the bushes, pausing to rummage with those familiar, abrupt movements, amongst last year’s dead leaves. His voice became strained. ‘Fact of the matter is, it wasn’t Roger’s kid. We all knew that. The whole thing broke him up. And Caroline – you can imagine what a strain it was on her. After that he and Caroline came to an accommodation’ – he made a moue to show he knew the word, though old-fashioned, was nonetheless necessary – ‘and he went back to his old pursuits. I think you probably met his latest conquest. Nice-looking girl, but horribly earnest. I think he was getting in over hi
s head there. I believe the dreaded M-word had been mentioned. Of course, Roger would never leave Caroline in a million years, even if he could – she’s his security blanket – but I doubt whether he will have told her that.’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘The female in question.’ Palliser grinned mirthlessly. ‘And no, I’m not going to tell you her name. You can work it out for yourself or go hang. I don’t kiss and tell, even when it’s someone else doing the kissing.’

  Slider reverted to the question of the quarrel with Greatrex, hoping that with the better atmosphere generated by Palliser’s self-satisfaction, the cause of their enmity might be forthcoming. But Palliser was quite determined, though also quite cheerful, about refusing.

  ‘I don’t have to tell you anything, and I’m not going to. My private life is none of your bloody business.’ He said it with a grin, but Slider felt there was a tenseness under it, and that the eyes were wary behind the shielding glass.

  Even the old ‘by the way’ ploy chalked up a big fat zero. ‘By the way, I understand you left the greenroom alone shortly after Roger Greatrex left it for the last time. Would you mind telling me where you went?’

  ‘I went to make a telephone call,’ he said, and cocked his head consideringly. ‘Now who told you I left the room? One of those daffy girls the Beeb is infested with, I suppose. That’s where our licence money goes – from our pockets straight to Monsoon and The Body Shop, merely filtered by all the Emmas and Katys and Sarahs. It’s social work, pure and simple. No-one else’d give them a job.’

  Slider refused the enticing flicker of the lure. ‘There was a telephone in the greenroom,’ he said. ‘You could have used that.’

  ‘Ah, but I wanted privacy,’ Palliser grinned. ‘And no, it’s no use looking like that, I’m not going to tell you who I telephoned.’

  ‘If you won’t tell me, I may draw my own conclusions from your refusal,’ Slider warned.

  ‘You can do what you like – I can’t stop you,’ Palliser said almost gleefully. ‘I’ve told you I didn’t kill Roger, and unless you want to charge me with it, that’s all I am going to tell you.’

  The inner man needed fortifying after that, notwithstanding the coffee and shortbread.

  ‘Do you fancy a pint?’ Atherton asked tentatively.

  ‘Does Carmen Miranda wear fruit?’ Slider responded; so they drove back to the Crown and Sceptre in Melina Road to collate the information over a pint of Fullers and a plate of pasta.

  ‘So what do you think of all that, guv?’ Atherton asked. ‘Likes listening to himself, doesn’t he?’

  ‘A practised performer,’ Slider said. ‘He was putting up smokescreens, watching himself do it, and watching us watching him.’ Too many layers of overlapping consciousness for the truth to be obvious, which was the purpose of the exercise. ‘He was hiding something, but what, and why?’

  ‘Maybe just for the hell of it,’ said Atherton. ‘Another one of those clever dicks who think it’s amusing to mislead coppers by concealing perfectly innocent information.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Atherton looked at him. ‘You liked him,’ he discovered.

  Slider looked up. ‘That doesn’t mean I don’t think he was capable of doing it. He’s a clever man, a thinking man, and if he did kill Greatrex he’ll be one step ahead of us all the way.’ He sipped his pint. ‘And if he did kill him, he’ll have had a very good reason.’

  ‘He’s got to be up there with the star suspects,’ Atherton said, and told off on his fingers. ‘There’s the acknowledged enmity between them, the quarrel on the night itself, his being missing at the appropriate time, and the fact that he’s concealing things from us. And,’ he remembered, ‘he’s tall enough, and he looks strong enough.’

  ‘There’s one big objection,’ Slider said.

  ‘How did he manage to cut Greatrex’s throat and return to the greenroom without a speck of blood on him?’

  Slider nodded. ‘Protective clothing, perhaps, which he concealed somewhere before going back to the greenroom.’

  ‘And probably meant to collect afterwards, but which might still be hidden somewhere?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Slider said.

  ‘After all,’ Atherton reasoned with himself, ‘whoever killed Greatrex had the same problem. He’d have had to have protective clothing, or wander about the Centre covered in blood and have someone notice it. How would he explain it away?’

  ‘By saying he got it all over him when he examined the corpse,’ Slider said. ‘It’s good psychology to be the first to find the body. If you raise the alarm, no-one’s going to think it was you that did it – everyone expects a murderer to make very long tracks – and if you’re bloodstained, you’ve got the perfect excuse.’

  Atherton thought about it unwillingly. ‘But you’d have to be a very cool customer to brass that out. Your average person, even if they meant beforehand to kill, would instinctively want to run away and try to conceal everything afterwards. You’re talking about a cold, ruthless cunning, calculating the odds. Did Philip Somers strike you that way?’

  ‘No,’ Slider admitted. ‘And there was the mistake about the knife. If he was a calculator, he’d have taken my hint about the knife.’

  Atherton grinned. ‘I love the way you always see both sides.’

  ‘But a man doesn’t have to be completely consistent. You can have a degree of calculation intermingled with unforeseen panic. He could have planned it all beforehand, but not have reckoned on how upset he’d be afterwards; clung to his original plan without being able to adapt as he went. And certainly he stuck to his post, guarding the door and preventing anyone else from going in. Don’t you think that was an odd thing to do?’

  ‘Unusually self-controlled, anyway,’ Atherton granted. ‘Well, Somers certainly had the opportunity – and he is the one person who didn’t have to explain the blood away. But what would his motive be? Did he know Greatrex?’

  ‘We have Dorothy Hammond’s story that he said he didn’t want Greatrex on the show. For reason or reasons unknown.’

  ‘And then there’s Palliser’s hints about a woman in the case,’ Atherton said. ‘If Greatrex was a womaniser, there could have been any number of jilted lovers and cuckolded husbands after his blood.’ He sighed. ‘Let’s face it, it could be absolutely anyone.’

  ‘Yes. We have so little to go on.’

  ‘Who dragged whom at the wheels of what, how many times round the walls of where?’ Atherton said. ‘Ah well, it’s early days yet.’

  ‘Quite. We have lines to follow up, so let’s follow them. Palliser, to begin with, I think. His wife may have some interesting information, if she can be got to open up.’

  ‘Me for that,’ Atherton said. ‘I’m good with old ladies. It’s my old-fashioned courtesy mixed with my boyish good looks. They always want to pet me and give me toffees.’

  ‘And we might trace the knife, or find witnesses, or more forensic evidence. If it wasn’t Somers, there must be more blood somewhere.’

  ‘Blood will out,’ said Atherton. ‘I’d settle for a nice thumbmark somewhere – Palliser’s print and Greatrex’s blood-group.’

  Slider ignored the taunt. ‘If only it had happened somewhere more private and confined. I hate to think of all those hundreds of people coming and going and trampling about. A nice little domestic where you can seal it all off would be a piece of cake compared with this.’

  ‘That’s why we get the big money,’ Atherton said cheerfully. ‘Want any pud?’

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Bridgers of Kensington County

  Norma was looking for him when he got back to the factory. ‘The Lab phoned, guv. Mr Arceneaux. Wants you to phone him back.’

  ‘Right, thanks.’

  She followed him into his room. ‘Any luck?’

  ‘Lots of interesting stuff about Greatrex. He and Palliser were friends from thirty years ago, but there was a lot of rivalry between them. Palliser won’t say what their quarrel was about, but all the
indications are that Greatrex was an inveterate womaniser, and Palliser reckons we should be looking for a woman. But if it was a woman that killed him, she’d have to have been tall and strong – like you, in fact. Any offers?’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ she said, ‘I have. It struck me as odd that the only guest Fiona Parsons went downstairs to meet in person was Greatrex. And, after what Dorothy Hammond said about her quarrel with Somers, I checked with the editor, and it was actually Parsons who suggested Greatrex for the show. Martin Fletcher, the editor, was doubtful about having Greatrex and Palliser at the same time, but she persuaded him.’

  ‘It was a topical choice,’ Slider pointed out. ‘After all, they had been having a newspaper argument about the very subject of the show. It might have been no more than that.’

  ‘Yes, guv, but it was Parsons who suggested the subject as well. Maybe she was having an affair with Greatrex, and wanted the chance to be with him – what d’you think?’

  ‘If she was having an affair with him, surely she’d have wanted to be alone with him, not see him in a public place like that? After all, how much time could she hope to spend with him in those circumstances?’

  ‘But he was married,’ Norma said, and then, seeing he hadn’t followed the point, elaborated. ‘A woman who’s having a secret affair with a married man jumps at any chance to be with him, whether alone or in public, for however short a time. Those are the crumbs from the table she lives off.’

  Slider felt uncomfortable to be reminded of this, and said, ‘Even if she was having an affair with him, why should you think she murdered him?’

  ‘I don’t think it,’ she said, offering him his own customary words back, ‘I’m only looking for anomalies.’

  ‘And have you found any?’

  ‘I think so. Parsons says she was in the studio at the time of the murder, and that that’s where Hammond found her to tell her of the death, but after I spoke to Hammond I went and talked to some of the people in the studio, and there’s not one who can say exactly where Parsons was at any particular time. And when I checked with Hammond again, she said she had to look all over the studio before she found Parsons.’