Farthing (34 page)

Campion Hall turned out to be a miniature castle, built by the Normans to keep down the Welsh, destroyed by Cromwell when the Welsh supported the king against him, then lovingly restored by the

Victorians. They had made additions they were sure the medievals would have added if they’d only thought of them, such as pointed turret-tops, Rackhameque wall paintings, and running water. The only thing they’d missed was a moat, probably because the place was on the side of a hill, nestled among pine trees. It was most picturesque and utterly monstrous.

“What a ghastly thing,” Carmichael said as they parked in front of the scrollwork portcullis.

“What, sir?” Izzard asked.

Carmichael shook his head, yearning for Royston. “It doesn’t matter, constable.” He rang the bell-pull.

At the side of the portcullis was an ordinary wooden door, which was opened by an elderly butler.

“I’d like to see Lady Thirkie, please,” Carmichael said, offering his card.

“Follow me,” the man said, after scrutinizing it for a long while.

Carmichael and Izzard followed him down a long passage, decorated with wall paintings illustrating

Aesop’s fables, and into a large drawing room, the walls painted with trees, but furnished in the prevailing style of about 1880, massive pieces of mahogany furniture upholstered in red velvet and decorated with white lace antimacassars and doilies.

“Please wait, I’ll fetch Lady Thirkie,” the butler said. Carmichael strolled about looking at the walls. The draftsmanship was as exquisite as the taste was terrible. Izzard took up a position resembling parade rest near the doorway, seeming to take no notice of anything.

The woman who came in at last was certainly not Angela Thirkie. She must have been forty years older.

She was dressed head to toe in black, like a Victorian widow, or like Queen Victoria herself, whom she somewhat resembled, except for being so much taller.

“My name is Carmichael, of Scotland Yard,” he said, bowing. “I was hoping to see Lady Thirkie?”

“Yes,” she said. “I am Lady Letitia Thirkie, and I recognize you from your newspaper photograph, though you’re certainly rather more handsome in person. I must say you fellows have taken your time.

She’s flown the coop.”

“Who has what?” Carmichael was bemused.

“Isn’t that the expression? I found it in Edgar Wallace. She’s left. Gone. She’ll be halfway to Thirkie by now.”

“You’re the dowager Lady Thirkie?” he asked.

“We both are, now,” she said. “My daughter-in-law, Angela, has left, I’m sorry to tell you. Do sit down.

And you too, sergeant—is it sergeant?”

“Constable Izzard, madam,” Izzard said, without moving a muscle.

“Ah.” Lady Thirkie contemplated Izzard for a moment. “I wonder if you’d be more comfortable in the kitchen?”

Izzard looked at Carmichael. “Yes, go on, constable,” Carmichael said.

“They’ll give you tea or something while I talk to the Inspector,” Lady Thirkie said. “It’s straight down the corridor and the door on the left.”

“That’s this side, Izzard,” Carmichael added.

“Yes, sir; thank you, madam,” Izzard said, and stumped off.

“It must be a sore trial to you to have to deal with such people,” Lady Thirkie said, sympathetically.

“Izzard is on loan,” Carmichael admitted. “He does have good qualities, but they are not of the conversational kind. My usual assistant, who is both clever and useful to me, is busy today.”

“Yes, you must all be very busy with all this terrible business with Bolsheviks and Jews and anarchists and goodness knows what shooting at people,” Lady Thirkie said. “But Inspector, whatever else they might have done, shooting at Lord Eversley and so on, they did not murder my son James. My daughter-in-law did that. She as good as admitted it to me, in this very room.”

“I knew it,” Carmichael said, most unprofessionally.

“You’ll have a long drive ahead of you. She’s going to Thirkie, in North Yorkshire. Her so-called chauffeur came down from London last night to take her. They left immediately after breakfast.”

“What exactly did she say?” Carmichael asked.

“She said I need not worry that James had died painfully, they had taken the utmost care that he had not, by gassing him before he was stabbed. I asked why murderers would take such pains.

She was very vague, and said something about Jews too worn out for factory work being gassed on the Continent.”

If they’d found him in the car with the star, they might have thought of that themselves, Carmichael thought. “He was gassed, and it wasn’t painful,” he said. “The police have been very careful to keep that from everyone, so there’s no chance she could have known that innocently.”

“She is not a very clever woman,” Lady Thirkie said. “Are you aware, Inspector, that she was not my son’s first choice? His first wife, Lady Olivia, was a Larkin, you know. And after she was killed, in the

Blitz, it was Angela’s sister Daphne that James fell in love with. She was married, to that parvenu Normanby as it happens, so James married the sister, who had some resemblance to her, but not, regrettably, in wits. James told me at Christmas that the marriage had been a sad mistake, and that he had little hope of an heir. He told me he was going to invite his elder cousin Donald Thirkie, at present at

Oxford, to visit Thirkie and begin to know it. His father Oswald will inherit it now, which he can never have expected.”

“Lady Angela Thirkie is expecting,” Carmichael said.

“Yes, she told me. I am assured by her personal maid that the baby is the chauffeur’s. It’s a blessing that she’ll be hanged before it can be born to taint our name.”

“The baby is innocent, surely,” Carmichael protested.

“Innocent, perhaps, but not my grandson,” Lady Thirkie countered, as if that were guilt enough.

“Let me continue. I was not suspicious at the news of the gas, although it had not been in the newspapers, because, after all, she had been there and I didn’t know what you might have told her. I became a little suspicious when she told me she was in the family way—that’s another expression I’ve gleaned from my reading. Another is ‘bun in the oven.” But in any case, when she said she had a bun in the oven,“ Lady

Thirkie repeated the words with loving emphasis, ”I was surprised, but ready to be delighted at the thought of the family continuing. I had two sons, Inspector; I went through pregnancy and childbirth twice, and to do that for nothing, no grandchildren, no continuation of the line, is tragic. My elder son, Matthew, was killed in France, you know.“

“I did know,” Carmichael said. “I’m very sorry—and I’m even more sorry for your recent loss.”

“Thank you,” she said, with dignity, and her face crumpled for a moment. “But do let me go on.

If I stop to think about that I shall be undone. At dinner last night, we were naturally talking about James’s death, and about the motives of the murderer, or murderers. Angela betrayed the greatest knowledge of these motives. She said they had gassed him because they did not want to hurt him— Bolsheviks and Jews, whose reason for killing him would be that they hated him and hated the Peace he brought to us all! She said they moved him after killing him to show that it was they who had done it—when anyone would want to show the opposite. Even with a political assassination of that nature, they would want to distance themselves to the extent of not incriminating themselves. Kahn was right in the house. We talked about Kahn, whose flight was announced on the six o’clock news yesterday. Angela expressed disgust for Mrs.

Kahn, who had been Lucy Eversley, and said the Jews deserved everything they got and brought it on themselves. This was not my son’s view, Inspector. He did not like the business practices of the Jews, and he disapproved of intermarriage between our people and Jews, but he regarded the excessive hatred of them, which so many people display, as pathological.”

“Is that also your view?” Carmichael asked.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever met a Jew,” she said, after a moment’s reflection. “I live very quietly
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here and rarely go out. Perhaps if I did meet one, I would feel this instinctive revulsion some people say they feel. Or perhaps not. I would not have wanted my sons to marry one, but at present I feel very sorry for young Lucy Kahn, and for her husband.”

“So do I,” Carmichael admitted. “But do go on.”

“Beginning to be suspicious, though without knowledge of her motivation, I started to press Angela on the motivation of the murderers. She began by saying the obvious, that the Jews would hate him because of the Peace, and so on, but then she suggested that some people might want him out of the way because he was such a good man.”

“Noted for his personal integrity,” Carmichael said.

Lady Thirkie raised an eyebrow.

“That’s what the Scotland Yard report on him said. That he was noted for his personal integrity.”

Without any fuss at all, Lady Thirkie took a white handkerchief out of her reticule and mopped her eyes.

Carmichael could not help contrasting this to Agnes Timms’s display on the bench at Leigh the morning before. Yet, different as they were, Agnes Timms and Lady Letitia Thirkie together would hang Angela

Thirkie, and perhaps Normanby too.

“I had seen as much in the papers,” she said. “But it seems especially significant and creditable that it would be noted in a police report.”

“I’m sorry I never met him,” Carmichael said.

Lady Thirkie wiped her eyes again. “It seems to me,” she said, after a moment, “that this would be the reason for killing him. James would never have gone along with this unconstitutional coup, this nonsense that upstart Normanby has rammed through Parliament on the fear and excitement that murder creates.”

“You don’t think Lady Angela Thirkie acted alone, then?”

“She’s too much of a fool to do something so complicated on her own,” Lady Thirkie said. “She might have killed him, but she could never have covered it up. I’m sure Normanby was involved, and that probably means his wife as well, though I’m making an assumption there.

Angela several times said things about what Normanby thinks and what Normanby will do, which made me think she was privy to at least some of his plans.”

“You’d be prepared to swear to this in court, Lady Thirkie?” Carmichael asked, as he had asked Agnes

Timms the previous morning.

“More than that, I’d be delighted to,” she said. “We can’t let her get away with this. After dinner last night, when she’d announced her intention to go to Thirkie today, I interrogated her maid, and discovered that it was almost common knowledge below stairs that Angela had been having it off with the chauffeur.

I’d thought it peculiar when he drove down from London on Tuesday night. That settled her motive for being involved beyond any doubt.”

“Why didn’t you contact the police?”

“Inspector Carmichael, I’m disappointed to see you use that ugly Americanism ‘contact’ as a verb. There are many pithy expressions and neologisms that can improve the language, and there are others that diminish it. In any case, I did not communicate with the police, because I was sure you’d be here without that necessity—as indeed, here you are. I did not imagine that if I could put together a case against

Angela and Normanby, you would be far behind me.”

“No, indeed, Lady Thirkie,” he said.

She smiled. “It’s true that the police are wonderful,” she said.

Carmichael was embarrassed. “I think I’d better go back to the Yard now, and talk to my superiors about our next step. Is Lady Thirkie likely to stay at Thirkie?”

“At least until after the funeral, and she says she’ll stay there until the baby’s born,” Lady Thirkie said.

“Let me know when you want me to give evidence. I shall enjoy it a great deal. I’ve never been in a criminal court.”

Carmichael thought he’d enjoy it a great deal, too. He collected Izzard from the kitchen and set off back eastwards. They stopped in a little restaurant in Gloucester for lunch. Carmichael, despairing over the soup of Izzard’s conversation, read a crumpled copy of The Times that the restaurant found for him.

“Kahn did it” had no more power to distress him. Kahn would soon be restored to his bank and his

China tea. He had evidence now that would stand up to anything. News of Normanby’s reforms were almost irrelevant. Soon, whether or not they could convict him, Normanby would be in the dock beside

Angela Thirkie, his political career over and a new government formed. The news that Hitler would be in

London for the opening night Covent Garden production of Parsifal interested him but little. He did not care for Wagner. He went on plodding through the paper as he plodded through the uninteresting roast beef and tasteless potatoes the restaurant had brought him. His eye was caught by a tiny headline on an inside page: GANGLAND KILLING IN SOUTHEND Yesterday evening, a member of a Southend gang, believed to have been aiming at a member of a rival gang, accidentally shot and killed a hairdresser’s assistant who was passing on the other side of the road. Miss Agnes Timms, 25, of Leigh-on-Sea, was taken to hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival. The killer is unidentified but police hope for an arrest soon.

His beef turned to dry dust in his mouth and he almost choked trying to swallow. They had killed her.

Somebody had killed her to shut her up, directly after he had seen her yesterday. It was as if he had killed her himself, because if he hadn’t found her and talked to her, she would be alive now, cutting women’s hair, dying it blue, planning for her own salon. Forty-five pounds had seemed a fortune to her, and she had probably died with his handkerchief still in her pocket. What’s more, half of his evidence was gone. All he had now was Lady Letitia Thirkie. Would they attack her?

Would they kill her in the same cavalier fashion once he revealed that she had information? Was he even safe himself? Might there be a gunman waiting, a tragic accident, a policeman killed in the course of his duty? The man he suspected of killing Thirkie, for the most cold-blooded political reasons, and killing Agnes Timms to stop her telling what she knew, was Prime Minister. Could he go against the Prime Minister?