She Died Young (30 page)

She crossed and uncrossed her beautiful legs and looked round for the waiter.

‘I’ll have to be going soon, darling.’

‘You got to hear about it, but you didn’t really know what had happened. You were afraid your husband had something to do with it. So you sent me off on a wild goose chase down Notting Dale after Sonny Marsden.’

‘That’s nonsense, Gerry.’

‘You persuaded Maltese Mike’s wife to visit him and tell him what he had to do – and then the bent doctor, who did know what had happened, conveniently died …’

Sonia stood up. ‘Darling, now you’re really being ridiculous. And anyway, I have to go.’

She walked away across the lounge with that hesitant, drifting walk of hers. He stood looking after her. That walk was so much less decisive than she was. She swayed from side to side, but it was not erotic. The way people walked could tell you a lot about them. But the meaning of Sonia’s walk was hard to decipher.

chapter
43

B
LACKSTONE WAS WOKEN BY
the front doorbell. Or rather, as the first thing he saw was the window, bright sunshine cruelly impacting his headache, his first thought was that the doorbell must have rung. He turned over towards the still sleeping Rita and touched her shoulder and her hair, not wishing to awake her.

Slowly, he eased into a sitting position, suppressing groans, planted his feet on the ground, his stomach aching, rested awhile, then equally slowly and even more furtively, stood up and reached for his dressing gown, a schoolboy’s woollen effort with piping round the collar. He approached his front door with caution. There had been no follow-up to the threatening letters.

However, for all he knew, the little package that had dropped through the letter box, alongside the newspapers, might be a bomb. He stared at it for a long time. It hadn’t been delivered by the postman. It was too early for that. He pushed it gingerly with his foot. There was something about it that looked not quite right.

Eventually he fetched a bucket from the kitchen, filled it with water from the bathroom taps, placed it in the hall and dropped the package into it.

Nothing happened. He wasn’t sure if anything was meant to happen; whether it should fizzle, or somehow explode in the water, or just die. He left the bucket and its contents in the hall. Then he called the police.

chapter
44

J
ARRELL TELEPHONED TO REPORT
the new situation just as McGovern was about to set off for what he hoped was a final Oxford visit. So he made a detour on his way to Paddington to call on Sonia Mallory.

‘Mrs Mallory doesn’t receive visitors at this hour of the morning,’ said Mrs Smith repressively. She was fully prepared to face the world and she was stubborn, but after an initially firm defence, she yielded to McGovern’s calm insistence. They both knew she could refuse to let him in, but: ‘It is important for me to have a word with Mrs Mallory. It’s in her own interest. I’ll not stay long.’

He had to wait a while. Sonia never saw a visitor, client, friend or detective other than properly dressed and made up.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you so early. Thank you for agreeing to see me.’

This morning there was no offer of coffee or tea or something stronger. She simply sat down and waited for him to speak.

McGovern came straight to the point. ‘It’s about Professor Quinault again, I’m afraid, and your relationship with him. It seems just too coincidental for you and he simply to have been what you say you were. You knew his friend and colleague, Kingdom, in Berlin. Perhaps he knew quite a lot about you from that time. I know I’ve asked you this before, but I ask you now to tell me the truth. It has nothing to do with any attempt to make trouble for you. It is simply my job to investigate the Professor. So let’s start with how you and he met – over here or back there, in Berlin.’

When she looked at him, serious and sincere, it seemed, she suddenly reminded him of the girl he’d known as Frieda five – six – years ago in Berlin. Her calculation had been well disguised then, but even when he’d understood how cold she was, he’d still pitied her a little. He even pitied her now. She’d found success and security of a kind, but he couldn’t believe it was the life that the young woman he’d known would have chosen.

‘What would have happened if you’d stayed in Germany?’ It wasn’t at all the question he’d intended.

She looked at him blankly. ‘Is this what you’ve come to talk about at this hour in the morning?’

He shook his head. ‘I just wondered.’

‘If you really want to know – my father was in trouble with the authorities, the communists found him out in the end, they’d have come down hard on me too. Prison, hard labour, probably.’

‘Was it there you met Quinault?’

‘Oh no.’ He marvelled at how controlled she was, her economy of gesture.

‘So how …?’

‘I don’t know how he tracked me down. But he did. It must have been after Kingdom killed himself. He blamed me partly, I think. I imagine he started to look for me in Germany and eventually he found me here. I thought I had covered my tracks rather successfully, but clearly not quite well enough.’

‘So it wasn’t that he wanted you for espionage purposes.’

‘That’s a ridiculous idea.’

‘Revenge, then, for what happened to his friend, to Kingdom?’

‘No …’

‘Gerry Blackstone thinks you’ve been blackmailing him. Perhaps on account of what he gets up to here in your flat.’

‘You asked me that before, you remember.’

‘You seemed to think it was very funny.’

Sonia frowned. ‘I didn’t want to talk about it then. Perhaps I should have. I’m really not sure why I didn’t. I suppose …’

‘Suppose what?’

‘Oh … nothing. I’m not a blackmailer, Mr Detective. Far from it. But you know, you should really look into the Professor’s passion for antiquities. He spends a lot of money on those little relics of the Roman Empire. They’re very expensive, I believe, almost priceless, and hard to get hold of legally.’

‘You mean—?’

‘I mean the boot’s entirely on the other foot, Chief Inspector McGovern. You got it right. But the wrong way round. That’s why I found it so funny.’

chapter
45

‘C
HARLES!
CHARLES!
’ Mrs Hewitt called up from the hall. ‘There’s someone to see you.’

He stood at the top of the stairs and pushed back his hair. The tall figure stood against the light from the open front door. It took him some seconds to recognise the detective.

‘DCI McGovern. I wonder if I might have a few words.’

‘Charles darling, what
have
you been up to!’

‘You’ve no cause to be alarmed, madam. A routine enquiry.’

Charles tried to appear nonchalant, his descent of the staircase intended to look casual. Yet he was feeling slightly sick, partly on account of having been woken too suddenly, partly because of the only half-acknowledged fear that shadowed his erotic life and its risks; those dangers that had always excited him, but which now made him feel nervous. ‘I hope it isn’t about my bike,’ he drawled, and lounged against the banister.

‘Is there somewhere we can—’

‘Let’s go outside,’ suggested Charles hastily. He could not bear the thought of this imposing policeman in his bed-sitting room. There was something too scarily intimate about the exposure of his books, the picture of Oscar Wilde and, as revealing, of Montgomery Clift, easily reinterpreted as a secret betrayed rather than as a camp joke.

In the hall he grabbed his duffel coat from its hook. ‘We could walk down towards the Parks,’ he said.

‘As you wish. It’s about Andras Ferenczy, the Hungarian student. You’ve heard, I expect. He drowned.’

‘It was in the
Oxford Mail
.’

‘I met you with him.’

The fresh air had woken Charles up. He was beginning to feel prepared to approach this encounter as a challenge. ‘For about five seconds,’ he said.

‘It wasn’t too short a time to pass on some information about the Professor.’

‘I hope it was useful. Is that what this is about?’

‘It was a strange thing to do – to pass on that information. I’m interested to know what you were up to. But I also wanted to ask you about Ferenczy. I’m back here to help sort it out. It’s the Oxford police’s problem, essentially, but I’ve a responsibility too, so …’

‘How did you find out where I live?’

‘You gave your address as Magdalen College. I asked at the porter’s lodge.’

‘Of course.’

‘Ferenczy. Did you know him well?’

‘How could I? He’d only been here for a few weeks.’

‘But you struck up a friendship with him.’

‘Well … I met him at a meeting, that’s all. You know, about Hungary and Suez and everything.’ Caginess was the best course. ‘Well, actually it wasn’t about Suez. Just Hungary.’

Now the detective was explaining that anything Charles could say about the Hungarian’s state of mind would help to determine whether the drowning might have been suicide or was accidental. He hadn’t been drinking. It wasn’t clear what he was doing by the Cherwell on that particular evening. All that seemed certain was that he’d drowned the evening before his body was found.

Charles had already tried to work out which evening that was. He didn’t think it could have been the evening Andras failed to keep the rendezvous at Blackwell’s. That had been the evening Penny had told him about her pregnancy. He hadn’t gone down to London until the following weekend and only on the following Monday had the body been discovered – or was it yesterday? Either way, it could not have been that evening. Charles knew he had no cause to feel guilty for not having rushed round Oxford in search of Andras when he didn’t turn up, yet feel guilty he did.

‘I asked you what state of mind he was in.’ McGovern’s voice cut through Charles’ thoughts.

‘Sorry – I was thinking about that, but …’ He was unsure how much to say. The whole thing was a minefield. ‘I don’t really know,’ he said feebly.

‘Students at the hostel who knew him told me he was depressed.’

A few moments ago, Charles had felt enlivened by the thought of sparring with the forces of the law, but now he was in retreat again. ‘Probably … possibly,’ he said warily.

‘One of them suggested he might be troubled by feelings for his own sex,’ said McGovern ponderously.

‘Really?’ Charles gazed far away into the middle distance, where the Banbury and Woodstock roads forked. ‘Oh look, we’ve reached the Parks – we could wander in if you like.’

‘There’s a bench. We can sit down.’

Here and there a student wandered down a path or across the grass. A little wind got up and scurried a few dead leaves along the gravel. Charles suddenly felt immensely listless and dreary. ‘God, it’s depressing.’

McGovern leaned forward and looked closely at him. ‘You mean it’s depressing that he’d made a huge effort to flee his native country after a failed attempt to change things over there – and then, having got here, couldn’t carry on?’

‘Yes, that’s more or less what I meant.’

‘Unless, of course, it was an accident.’

‘That’d be as bad, in a different way.’

McGovern produced a cigarette case. ‘Smoke?’

‘Thanks.’

‘Mr Hallam – I don’t know how well you knew Ferenczy. Is there anything – anything – more you can tell me? About your relationship with him? About how he was feeling?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘The Oxford police are in charge of the case and they’re fairly convinced he killed himself. Everything his Hungarian friends at the hostel said points in that direction. There isn’t a note – so far. It’ll be necessary to search the house. His room at least. The Professor will probably not like that.’

‘I shouldn’t think he would.’

‘About Professor Quinault. Is there anything more you can tell me about him? Why were you looking through his belongings? You had no right to do that, had you? What were you up to? Was there something about the Professor you felt was suspicious?’

Charles felt the man’s gaze. This was the moment. He should speak. ‘No,’ he said, ‘there wasn’t. Not then. But there is now.’ He paused – partly because he was on the brink, but still uncertain. It was the right thing to do, but was it
really
what Reggie had wanted when she told him?

He took a deep breath and began. ‘I know someone in London – someone well known, who’s – well, being blackmailed. At least, my friend is having an affair with him. They’re both married, you see. And it’s Professor Quinault who’s blackmailing him. I know it sounds—’

‘Why did your friend tell you this?’

‘She couldn’t go to the police herself. Her friend wouldn’t let her. I think perhaps she sort of wanted me to.’

‘She should have consulted her lawyer.’

‘She can’t do that. He’s her husband’s best friend. The lawyer, I mean.’

‘The man being blackmailed is a public figure, you say?’

Charles nodded. Now he feared he’d said too much. ‘She told me Professor Quinault needed a lot of money for his—’

‘For his collection of Roman statuettes.’ At last he understood. So that was what Sonia had meant when she mentioned them. It was the wrong way round, she’d said: because she wasn’t blackmailing Quinault. He was blackmailing her. Although something had prevented her from saying it in so many words; some long-ago-developed defensive mechanism, to always say as little as possible.

McGovern stood up. He looked round the peaceful expanse of the Parks. He was so unprepared for this outcome that he was at a loss for words. ‘Who’d have thought it?’ he finally managed. ‘
He
was blackmailing
her!
’

‘Sorry?’ Charles looked at him, puzzled.

‘Nothing. It’s a surprise, that’s all.’ Unexpectedly, he smiled at the youth at his side. ‘So I suppose in a way I’ve you to thank – for drawing my attention to the money. But I must warn you not to make a habit of riffling through other people’s private papers.’

Charles smiled. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘That’s the sort of thing that only detectives are allowed to do.’