A Murder in Mayfair (17 page)

“By the way, you said you checked up on Frere. Did you notice the details of his academic career?”

“Just the main outlines that were in
Who's Who
or
People of Today
. They don't give much space to academics. Professor at Leicester, then at Manchester, wasn't it?”

“That's right. Went to Leicester in 1965. But from 1962 to 1964 he was temporary Professor of English, replacing someone who was sick, at the University of Southampton. Makes you think, doesn't it?”

 • • • 

The very next day I was followed again. I was conscious of the sound of those footsteps by now: waiting for them, tensing up when I heard them. I had deliberately left Great Smith Street and Whitehall for the quieter streets leading first to Northumberland Avenue, then to Charing Cross and the Strand. There they were: some way back, tentative, but indubitably following me.

I took care not to look round. I waited at the lights to cross the avenue, then proceeded forward toward the station. The temptation to try to snatch a glimpse, even to let him know I knew I was being followed, was almost irresistible. But this time I wanted to get a good look at him. Who was he, this dogger of my footsteps, and what was his connection with the joker who rang me with silly ditties, and the one who dropped shoplifted items into my carrier bag in Marks & Spencer? Was one male, the other female, or were they in fact one and the same person?

Around Charing Cross Station the scurry of people made listening impossible. I had to rely on guesswork to tell me he was still following me. I got to the traffic lights to cross the Strand,
and again had to resist the impulse to look back toward Trafalgar Square to see if I recognized any shabby figure coming along from the same direction as myself.

Once on the north side of the Strand I turned away from King William IV Street, walked past Coutts's Bank, and, shielded by a knot of people, slipped into the Music Discount Center. I immediately made for the bargain disc section to my left, commanding an excellent view through the large plate-glass window. Taking up the nearest CD and inspecting the details on the back I watched the lunch-hour crowd swelling, hurrying in the direction of the Aldwych.

Within seconds he was outside the window, looking ahead uncertainly, then around him, wondering how he'd lost the trail. He was shabbily dressed as before, the jacket, poor quality to begin with, looking as if it had been slept in, the trousers crumpled and dirty, the shoes going in the direction of disintegration. Without suggesting he was sleeping rough, he did seem only a step or two away from it—though whether going toward it or going away from it, I couldn't judge.

Then he looked at the shop door. My eyes were intent on the disc, but I could judge the face. He must have been thirty or so, I estimated, but the face was unformed, even pathetic. There was no strength to the chin, and the jaw generally was slack. The eyes were watery, the nose overprominent. His hair was long and greasy, and his skin had that unhealthy paleness that people who have been in jail get. Phrases like “born loser” or “born victim” occurred to me, though I'm sure one can't be
born
either thing.

His eyes swiveled from the door toward the window I was standing in. I raised mine as I casually put the disc back on the rack. For a second, two seconds, we looked into each other's eyes. Then he turned and hurried on in the direction of Aldwych. I dashed back out into the street. I was sorely tempted to
reverse roles and follow him, but I thought I was unlikely to find out anything to the purpose about him. As I watched he swerved off into one of the little streets heading up toward Covent Garden.

I turned toward the square and the National Gallery, had twenty minutes with the Spanish paintings, and coffee and a sandwich in the cafeteria. Then I went back to work, and this time there were no footsteps dogging mine.

T
he footsteps ceased from that time on. I felt free now to look behind me, scan the crowds following in my wake, but I never saw the slack-jawed, slightly pathetic creature who had so ineffectually dogged my course for a time.

One evening in the next week I was sitting in my flat working on my red boxes (soon, it was said, to be computerized) and listening to a little-known Donizetti opera in one of those pirate recordings made at performances long ago—recordings that made one feel slightly guilty that someone was being swindled. This one, made in the sixties, had a soprano called Margherita Roberti. I had a fantasy about her. This was that Margaret Thatcher, née Roberts, having too little to use her energy on in the years of the Wilson government, formed an opera company during the long summer recesses with herself as star, and toured the Italian provinces with the local version of her name. The fact that Margherita Roberti had a confident, slightly shrill voice added credence to the fantasy. Dennis would of course manage the enterprise, and the company would be formed on the nineteenth-century principle of “My wife and four puppets.” That, with an increase in numbers, was pretty much the principle adopted when the lady formed her cabinets.

I was meditating on Mrs. Thatcher's emasculation of her male colleagues and how the process of turning prime ministerial government into presidential government seemed to have been adopted by our side once in power, when the phone rang.

I picked it up with no forebodings, since it had been three weeks or more since the last nasty call. However, the moment I heard the click I knew what was coming, though as it turned out, the program had been changed.

It was opera this time, but something I did not know, or know well. Because the click had alerted me I was listening intently from the beginning. It was a female voice, and it began with the words “
Senza Mamma.
” The aria was allowed to proceed for a minute or so, and I picked out a word or phrase here and there: “
E tu set morto
,” “
un angelo del cielo.”
Then it was succeeded by something I did know: the concerted laughter of the merry wives in the garden of Master Ford at the end of the second scene of
Falstaff.
The laughter made my chest contract nervously, made me sense once again that someone was intent on making a fool of me. There could be worse things, of course. On the other hand it could be intended to lead to worse things. I put the phone down before the music had finished.

I couldn't get back to my red boxes for some time. I went through the characters in opera I could think of who had been
“senza mamma”
—without their mother. It was only some time later, as I was preparing for bed, that it came to me as these things do: seeming to come from the blue into an empty mind. It was Puccini's
Suor Angelica.
Nobody's favorite opera, but one which I'd caught up with once, on a holiday in the Naples area. I didn't have it in my collection. It was, I seemed to remember, Sister Angelica herself meditating on her illegitimate child—the child she had been forced to give up before taking the veil.

Nowadays, of course, she'd probably be in the Cabinet, and talking about her experiences in the
News of the World.

The more I thought about it, the less I could imagine Lucy Mariotti going into a nunnery.

It was Friday before there was any lull in my government work, so I had good time, in the occasional quiet moments, to think how I was to approach Professor Frere. I agreed with Frieda Brewer that, from a variety of points of view including my own position in politics, honesty would in this case be the best policy. Frieda had rung to give me his name, address, and telephone number, and in the end I rang him from my old home in Milton, before going out to a constituency meeting.

“Two-six-seven-five-three-four-one,” came a calm, solid voice.

“Is that Professor Frere? Simon Frere?”

“It is.”

“Oh, hello. My name is Colin Pinnock.”

Very tiny pause.

“Ah. You're not one of my former students, are you?”

“No, I'm not. I did English, but at Cambridge.”

“Perfectly good place to do it.”

I detected a defensive, temporizing feeling coming down the line.

“You don't know me, in fact, Professor Frere, but I think you did know my mother, Elizabeth Pinnock.”

Another pause—perfectly understandable, as memory was being racked. Only I didn't think it was due to that.

“Now . . . I think that rings a bell.”

“Secretary in the English Department at Southampton University.”

“That's it! Now I remember. Goodness me, that was a long time ago.”

“Thirty-five years.”

“Is that really how long? Well, well.”

“I know how long it is because I'm thirty-five years old.”

This time the pause was long.

“Mr. Pinnock, I think we should meet and have a talk.”

“I think so, too.” I added quickly: “Maybe I should say, Professor Frere, that the talk won't be in any spirit of recrimination or blame. There's nothing whatever to blame you for. I just want to find out what happened.”

“Ye-e-es. And you live where?”

“Mostly in London. I'm an MP—actually a very junior member of the government.”

“Really? I suppose it's a con—” He stopped short. I felt sure he was going to say it was a continuation of the family tradition, but thought it either unwise or an unfortunate reminder. He rather clumsily amended it to: “I suppose congratulations are still in order?”

“They are. Many thanks.”

“I'd be delighted to have an excuse to come to London. I'd like to see the new British Library. But I wonder, if, before we meet, I might write to you. You say there is nothing to blame me for but . . . there are some aspects of the affair that are very painful memories for me. I would prefer not to talk about them, though of course I'd feel obliged to answer any questions when we meet.”

“That's perfectly okay—a very good way of proceeding,” I said. “It will give me time to sort out any questions and identify any areas where I'm still uncertain. Mark it
PERSONAL
and send it to the House of Commons.”

The letter came three days later, handwritten—the writing of a careful, punctilious elderly man. I took it along to Dean's Yard and read it sitting on a seat in watery midday sun.

Dear Mr. Pinnock,

I think it's best to come straight to the point. I have done many things in my life that were silly, mistaken, or just plain wrong, but the human brain is fallible and one
learns to take most things in one's stride. The one thing in my life of which I am thoroughly ashamed is my involvement with Lucy Mariotti.

It began unexceptionably. I was a rising Shakespearian scholar and she contacted me by letter about doing a Ph.D. thesis. She came down to Southampton at my request soon after to discuss possible topics. There seemed to be a solid ground of knowledge there, which was a credit to Sydney University. We talked about taking a look at the Shakespearian Apocrypha and she seemed to like the idea. She said there was another professor who was interested in supervising her—she said this not in a manner that invited me to beg her to work under me rather than any other, but at least giving the impression that she would not be displeased if I did. I simply nodded, and we left the matter in the air.

I next read of Lucy Mariotti in the newspapers. She'd told me for whom she was working, so as soon as the case became a national cause celébrè I scanned the newspapers for her name. When I found it, read the tittle-tattle about her involvement with Lord John, I felt rather sorry for her, truth to tell. Wet-around-the-ears young colonial being seduced by an upper-crust Lothario was how I interpreted things. It was some time before I found out that Lucy was no Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

She rang me one night at home, sounding desperate. She said the police were finished with her, satisfied she'd had nothing to do with the murder and did not know where Lord John had disappeared to. But she was pregnant, without job or money, and the press were looking for her. Did I know of anywhere in Southampton where she could go to earth until she'd had the baby and could start work with me on her thesis? My wife overheard my
end of the conversation. She was a wonderful woman, very compassionate, and she'd agreed with my interpretation of the situation—innocence seduced by sophistication. I didn't need to do anything more than raise my eyebrows to her. She nodded, and I asked her down to stay with us until we could find her a bed-sitter. She arrived next day with three large suitcases—maybe not all she had in the world, but all she had in this hemisphere.

For the first few days everything went well. She was wonderful with our children, helped around the house, was very grateful—perhaps too volubly so. The only problem was that she was virtually in hiding, so she was around all the time. Then my wife started to have doubts. Lucy had never made any bones about the fact that she was going to have her baby adopted. But when she overheard her on the phone say something about “when I get shot of the kid,” her attitude hardened. She watched her when she was alone with our two, then six and four, and decided she didn't like what she saw. She'd been putting on an act. She decided she should be alone with them as little as possible, which was difficult because I had my job and my wife was doing a first degree in history. She began looking around for a bed-sitter for Lucy—quite difficult at that time of year, though it would become easy as soon as the students went down for the summer vacation.

Two things happened at about this time. She asked me if I knew anyone who wanted to adopt a child privately. I knew this meant, in effect, illegally. But I also knew your mother, and her desperate desire for children. I had no idea at the time that Lucy was going to insist that this was a money transaction. I don't know how much you know about this, but I repeat I didn't even consider the possibility. I was young, green, law-abiding, naive, call me what
you will. One evening, by arrangement, I drove Lucy round to their home and left her there. When they drove her home the deal was apparently completed. Gradually as I learned that the transaction was such that the baby—you—was virtually sold I was very shocked. But your mother, Elizabeth, swore me to secrecy, and seemed to take that aspect in her stride.