Angels Dining at the Ritz

by John Gardner

  Thetis said, ‘Here,’ the word launched on the aspirate, shot out, then, ‘Oh,’ realizing what he meant, and another ‘Oh! Here of course.’ A strangled sob.

  But it had worked, he thought, slapped her back from the tears. ‘And you, Mrs…Miss Palmer.’

  Tiny pause, just long enough to be registered.

  ‘I was here as well. I can vouch for Thetis, we can vouch for each other. I was away on the Monday. An appointment in London. My agent, I’m a painter, not unsuccessful. My agent, Johnny Goodman, old friend. There’s been an offer for a series of paintings I’ve done. Johnny rang, wanted me to go up, he runs a gallery, the Goodman Gallery, Bruton Street, off New Bond Street. A considerable sum of money’s involved. I was with Johnny later that day when the news broke about Maxie.’

  Suzie thought, the news broke, no names, at around nine that morning. BBC. Home and Forces Programme.

  Maxie, she thought.

  ‘You left Thetis alone here?’ Tommy asked, the mildest hint of aggression.

  ‘No, I have an exceptionally good housekeeper, Mrs Goode, Emily Goode — with an g, we joke about it. And a daily, comes in early, Mrs Crane. I’m careful about domestics. I have to be, you see…’

  ‘We know,’ Tommy said quickly, stressing that she was an open book to them, knew everything.

  Paula stepped back, made a little moue, lifting her chin, tilting her head.

  ‘You went unusually early.’ Thetis, eyes still red, tears trickling straight down, as if designed especially, making deltas on her cheeks. But she’d said it now, as if accusing her mother.

  ‘There was a phone call, early, six in the morning, from Johnny.’ Paula back in the conversation.

  Thetis said she thought it was much earlier. ‘I went back to sleep. I had some silly idea it was sometime around three or four. Can’t really remember.’

  ‘Even Johnny wouldn’t ring at four in the morning. No, I saw Mrs Crane. She’ll tell you. I got the milk train. Left the car at the station.’

  Suzie nipped in, ‘You have petrol?’ suspicious. Only a few weeks before, in July, even the basic ration had been done away with and other restrictions were tightened.

  Paula Palmer didn’t even look in Suzie’s direction, answering directly to Tommy. ‘Just enough. I’m a nurse with the ARP and have to use a car to get to the first-aid post on the other side of town if there’s a raid.’

  Tommy nodded, turned back to Thetis. ‘That was the last time you saw your father, then, the dinner party at Knights Cottage?’

  The girl nodded, mouthing, ‘Yes,’ they could hardly hear her.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Tommy meaning it, turning to Paula. ‘And what time did you get back from London?’

  ‘Sixish, I think,’ she looked over at Thetis, querying, seeing if she remembered.

  ‘She got in about six fifteen,’ the girl said. ‘I had got myself some supper because I was going to the pictures to see Citizen Kane. Mummy came in and told me about Daddy. Awful shock.’

  ‘So you didn’t get to go to the pictures. Pity, Citizen Kane’s good.’

  Callous bugger, Suzie thought, still knowing there would be a reason for his behaviour. She also remembered what Willoughby had said — A close friend of the family told her mother, who broke it to the girl.

  ‘And you, Miss Palmer. How did you feel?’ Rounding on her, hostile, wanting to know even though he’d warned Suzie that, at this stage, they shouldn’t let her know how much they knew — or thought they knew — Tommy’s right forefinger was stabbing towards Paula Palmer, accentuating his hostility. Suzie wondered if this was calculated, reminding her of Christine Betteridge’s murder here, in this house.

  ‘How do you think I felt?’ she snapped. ‘My daughter’s the one person in this life who means anything to me. There was a time when I’d link that with my daughter’s father, he’s been damned good, kept his word about everything. Even after all these years I sometimes wonder if I’m over him yet.’ The whole short speech delivered in a way that you could almost taste the lightning in the air, and feel the sharp steel out of its scabbard.

  Tommy was a gent when the chips were down, apologized with style. ‘Miss Palmer, I am so sorry. Unforgivable of me, course you have the same feelings as —’

  ‘And what would make you think I didn’t?’ Quite clearly regarding his last remark as patronizing, which made him express more humility.

  ‘What else can I say? I…’

  ‘Nothing, I think you’ve said enough, Chief Superintendent.’

  ‘Got my rank right,’ he said later. ‘Means she was listening. A sharp lady and you could not take her for anything else but a lady.’

  In the present, in her house, ‘River Walk’ in sight of the River Great Ouse, Tommy took a further chance. ‘You’ve never married, Miss Palmer?’

  ‘I haven’t, have I? Not since Eric Barnard that is, and when I divorced him I reverted to my maiden name,’ she threw back at him, waiting for three or four beats before adding, ‘That doesn’t mean I’m inexperienced in life. Quite the opposite. One might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.’ Little brittle laugh. ‘That was clear to me, after Thetis was born — and happily I can say this in front of my daughter — quite clear that I was going to be treated as one of the town’s scarlet women, so I didn’t allow it to hold me back.’

  Tommy smiled at her and quoted the Bible, ‘Let him who is without sin —’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘…cast the first stone.’

  That seemed to be a breach of the barriers: a moment of mutual respect after which they appeared to treat each other as equals, and Tommy indicated that Thetis could leave them for the time being. ‘I’ll come back next week,’ he told Miss Palmer. ‘When I have more facts. We’re really only in the early stages of the investigation.’ Then, as they got to the door, ‘Mrs Palmer, how did you actually hear about the killing of the Ascolis?’

  ‘Our doctor, Fran Collins, was asked to break the news. She actually came here, saw Mrs Crane, who said I was in London, even mentioned I could be contacted at the Gallery. Fran rang me there.’ She switched the conversation, ‘Do you think you’re going to…’

  ‘Find the culprit?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Believe me, we usually do. There are leads now… We’ll have to see.’ He paused, the usual pause in the hope that she would need to speak, fill in the blank space. Then — ‘Miss Palmer, this offer you’ve had, is it for one of the cathedral sets? Norwich or Ely?’ Let her know they were aware of her work.

  She shook her head, ‘No. How well do you know King’s Lynn?’

  ‘I don’t. I know it’s an old port, built around the river mouth and that’s about all. I don’t think I’ve ever been here before, maybe once as a child, but not in recent years.’

  ‘There are some wonderful mediaeval streets that lead down to the quays on the river. I did a set of four paintings of one of those streets at different times of the year. It’s the light that’s so good. Juxtaposition of the buildings to sea and the sky. The light.’

  ‘Like Venice?’

  ‘Venice is more dramatic, yes, but like Venice, the light. I did four paintings, each from a slightly different perspective: in a thunderstorm, in summer sunlight, in snow and with a grey autumnal sky.’

  ‘And the offer is good? I mean financially good?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ And that was all she said on the matter.

  ‘Tried to prise the price out of her, but she wasn’t having any,’ Tommy said in the car going to their next appointment on the edge of the town. ‘What d’you make of them?’

  ‘Which one, Paula or young Thetis?’

  ‘I can’t see the girl being implicated in the murder of her father, don’t think fratricide’s her thing. Unless she really heard the telephone ring in the night, summoning Paula out to pick up the killer on the fringe of Long Taddmarten, and was being influenced to keep quiet. After all she had a car and petrol. Very handy.’

  ‘Silent Thetis,
eh?’

  ‘Maybe. As for Paula I think she’d kill, heart. Tough as old boots. Maybe has killed once, could do it again.’

  They had been driving east, to the outskirts of the town, the dwellings dribbling out. Eventually Brian tipped his head back, and slowed the car. ‘This it, Chief? Row straight ahead, on the left?’

  There were four cottages, detached but all looking like those cottages you get in jigsaws, thatched, roses fading around the door on a wire frame, the last of the summer, lupins, foxgloves and hollyhocks in the front garden, peas, beans, carrots and spuds round the side with a couple of rows of lettuces: flowers and veg nearly all done now in the dog days of summer.

  ‘Number twenty-nine, right, Chief?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘It’s this one here, on the end.’ Brian could pick out a number on a door at fifty yards, even further. Among the vegetables round the side there was a home-made bird scarer on a tall piece of four by two, a yellow aeroplane with a big tail and a propeller that buzzed round in even a light breeze. The movement frightened small birds away from the lettuce but didn’t do anything for the slugs.

  ‘Who lives here, then?’ Suzie asked.

  ‘Jack Bennett.’

  She sighed, ‘And who’s Jack Bennett?’

  ‘Retired police sergeant. Detective Sergeant actually. Used to work in the nick here in King’s Lynn. He’s the one who picked up the telephone one day and spoke to Phil Poole the Sands-Ascoli gumshoe, said, “Phil, we’ve got something in the CID storeroom here at King’s Lynn that’ll put hair on your chest.’”

  ‘Oh, that Jack Bennett,’ Suzie grinned.

  He turned out to be a tall, grey man not really likeable: unhappy, unfulfilled, Suzie thought. The cottage lacked a woman’s touch: the flowers left in the garden, none in the house; everything was on the outside, inside there was clutter.

  ‘John Eustace Bennett?’ Tommy held his warrant card at eye height, his hand stock still, fist bunched.

  ‘Yes,’ swallow, like Thetis, nervous.

  ‘Detective Chief Superintendent Livermore. One of my sergeants telephoned you?’

  Another ‘yes’.

  ‘Reserve Squad, Scotland Yard. What the papers sometimes call the Murder Squad.’

  A slow smile spread across Bennett’s face as he relaxed.

  Tommy introduced Suzie. ‘Thought we were the rubber heels, did you, Jack?’

  ‘Possibly,’ he said, giving nothing away. ‘What’s this about? The girl who rang me didn’t say.’

  ‘It’s germane to the triple murder we’re investigating out at Taddmarten.’

  ‘Poor Max Ascoli, yes. Terrible. Is it going to take long, what you want with me?’ He had motioned them inside, indicating chairs, pausing even to offer a drink. There was a large and vulgar globe in one corner of the small living room, the kind of thing you saw in American films set during the fifteenth or sixteenth century, but the globe slid open to reveal an interior bottlescaped with whisky, gin, rum and brandy. Suzie wondered if the former detective sergeant was a bit of a toper.

  ‘It going to take long?’ he asked again now, as if time was, as they say, of the essence.

  ‘Just as long as it takes.’ Tommy gave a wicked little smile and seated himself across from the globe, leaning back in the armchair, all the time in the world.

  ‘I normally wouldn’t worry, but I’ve got a popsy coming to see me.’

  Tommy frowned at this use of Raff slang. Jack was a former policeman, he would have argued, no right to misappropriate Raff slang. He said, ‘A popsy, eh? At your age?’

  ‘Guv, you don’t know what it is to be retired. You spend forty years in the Job, racing around from arsehole to breakfast time, never knowing if you’re on your arse or Easter Day, then suddenly, nothing. Not a bloody thing. No office, no nick, no cases. Set adrift. There’s nothing worse than retiring. I promise you.’ He looked up and saw Suzie grinning. ‘I beg your pardon, Sarge.’

  ‘No hobbies?’ asked Tommy.

  ‘Just the usual. Oh, I am in the Home Guard, but that’s like Fred Karno’s Army most of the time. Serious, but playing soldiers when it comes down to it. Didn’t even find time to get married, Guv. The Job consumed me.’ Coppers always spoke of their vocation as The Job.

  ‘Home Guard could hold Jerry up for half-an-hour, it’d be worth it.’ Tommy was straight faced, meant it. More to himself he said, aloud, ‘I suppose I’m lucky. When I’m put out to grass I’ve got a farm to run.’

  ‘Right, Guv.’ Bennett sat himself down opposite Tommy and waited, head thrust forward, expectantly, almost taking charge.

  Why isn’t he a reserve copper? Suzie wondered. Must ask Tommy, look into it.

  ‘Want you to cast your mind back,’ Tommy being leisurely, as though starting to tell a story. ‘Nineteen twenty-five. Betteridge had been found guilty, sentenced to death, then commuted…’

  ‘Yes, that was odd for a start,’ Bennett’s head moved up and down. ‘Nasty bugger that Betteridge, deserved to be topped, I reckoned.’

  ‘You’d investigated Paula Palmer.’ A statement.

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘Nobody’s heart was in it, but there was pressure. Somebody wanted her looked at, wanted her drum turned over.’

  ‘You had some items brought in from her drum…er…her house — from “River Walk”.’

  ‘Yes, we did.’

  ‘And you rang Phil Poole and told him.’

  Bennett gave a little smile, moved his head from right to left, dipping towards his shoulders. ‘Well…’ drawing it out, ‘well, it wasn’t as simple as that.’ Then his face went grave again. ‘Oh, Lord, Guv, I’m not going to get into any trouble for that am I, after all this time?’

  With brutal frankness Tommy told him, ‘You did tamper with potential evidence. Gave something away that was not yours to give. Just tell me what happened. What occurred?’ Being pedantic.

  Jack Bennett sighed in a kind of embarrassment, then gave a gesture signifying defeat. ‘Started with Phil Poole,’ his face now closed off where before it had been frank and welcoming. ‘Phil arrived with the great Ned Sands and his junior, Max Ascoli, fresh-faced lad, eager. Phil didn’t even have the decency to come by a different train. Word came back to us and by the next morning he was here, in King’s Lynn. Within thirty-six hours he had his team assembled and working for him: two girls in the Council Offices, a young bank clerk, a quite senior member of the executive staff at the hospital, me and another copper.’

  ‘How…?’ Tommy began.

  Bennett raised a hand. ‘Lunchtime, in the snug bar of the Bull. Don’t ask me how he got his info but he was there, where I usually went, well at least three, sometimes four, times a week. He was sitting waiting for me and had me sewn up in less than half-an-hour.’

  ‘Money?’ Tommy asked, his face showing slight disgust.

  ‘It was implied, then denied. But that wasn’t what worked.’

  ‘So, what did work?’

  ‘Phil was extraordinary, had a presence, a personality. Just won you over. He said something like, “I work for the briefs who’ve come up for the trial. If you ever feel like answering the odd question, or telling me something you think I should know… Well, I’ll be eternally grateful.”’

  ‘That sounds like money.’ Tommy was sitting bolt upright, his tone flat.

  ‘I asked him what he meant and he said, “I’ve told you. I’ll be eternally grateful. Could do you a favour sometime. Don’t get the wrong idea, I’m not talking dropsy.’”

  ‘So you passed things on.’

  ‘No, Guv. No, I didn’t. Not until a year later. Never give him anything ’til then.’

  ‘’Til the letter?’

  ‘Right, but it was only one of sixty or seventy.’

  ‘Sixty or seventy letters from the same person? You’re sure?’

  Well, Suzie thought, seventy-odd letters passing between Paula and her lover E.T., and fifty-odd letters hidde
n away by Max Ascoli, the beloved Maxie, purporting to be the record of a resumed love affair between Max and Paula when Max was supposedly obsessed by his wife, Jenny.

  Looked like a permanent honeymoon from where I was sitting, Willoughby Sands said. Well, we now wonder? Suzie thought.

  ‘Course I’m sure, Guv. I was the only one to sift through those letters. I read them. Christ they were sexy. I wondered, seriously wondered if they were real.’

  ‘Were you meant to read them?’

  ‘Don’t know really. My guv’nor, DI Crook — great name for a copper — told me to get anything we had back to Miss Palmer. There was this one box, shoe box, Clark’s Shoes, stuffed full of letters. I took a look, all from the same bloke, all full of love talk and then sex talk. Obscene a lot of it, like I said.’

  ‘If she wasn’t going to publish she hasn’t broken the law then.’ Tommy being painfully witty.

  Bennett nodded, didn’t smile, obviously thought he was being serious.

  ‘You showed any of the letters to your DI?’

  Bennett shook his head. ‘He was dealing with a nasty little assault case. Didn’t want to bother him. Anyway, it’s a long while ago now. Nineteen twenty-five, Christ, a lifetime ago.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Tommy, looking hard at him, eyes like sparklers. ‘So why did you send it to Phil Poole?’

  ‘Knew it would interest him. I spoke to him and we all knew what was going on between his boss’s junior and the Palmer woman. So I give it him.’

  ‘And there were no kickbacks?’

  ‘No one said a word. We didn’t see that much of Maxie afterwards though.’

  They drove back to the Falcon, Taddmarten, in a golden, buttery dying sunshine and Tommy asked Suzie what she thought of Jack Bennett. ‘Didn’t like him,’ she said. ‘Don’t know why but wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.’

  ‘Not far then,’ Tommy grinned and put his hand around the top of her arm, feeling the muscles.

  Tonight there were no treats from Kingscote Grange, so they were reduced to eating from the Staleways’ menu, which wasn’t bad, home-cured ham and chips with some slightly soggy cabbage.

  Tommy talked shop throughout. ‘Discovered I was at school with the Raff station commander at the “drome”,’ he said. ‘Chap called Raleigh Ridsdale, Group Captain. Talked to him tonight, got us invitations to the hop on Saturday night. Having dinner with him first — you’re invited, Molly, and Suzie — dinner, then the dance, it’ll be fun, all ranks dance, including the Yanks, the Waafs’ll be queuing up no doubt.’