She Died Young (31 page)

chapter
46

M
CGOVERN LEFT CHARLES HALLAM
on the park bench and walked slowly away. Nothing had prepared him for what he’d just heard. In itself, Charles Hallam’s startling information was useless, nothing but hearsay. But he had to pursue it.

He decided to return to Quinault’s house. It was unorthodox. On the basis of some gossip imparted by a student he’d never get a warrant. Even to ask questions would be open to challenge.

He had to consider the possibility that Hallam had been acting out of malice. The death of the Hungarian student had upset him, perhaps. It was just a wild accusation. Or perhaps he bore some grudge against his Professor.

McGovern borrowed a parked bike from outside Somerville College. It was a woman’s bike, but he didn’t care. He left it in the drive of the Grange and knocked on the front door.

This time the front door was locked. He walked round to the back garden and tried the French windows. These were also locked, but he remembered how flimsy the lock was and prised it open without much difficulty.

He was once more in the Professor’s study.

This time he made a much more careful search: of the desk and its drawers, of the cupboards beneath the glass cabinet and of the filing cabinets standing along the opposite wall. It was painstaking and wearisome, the sort of detailed work he was good at. He kept an ear open for the sound of either the Professor or his wife returning. He knew how he would explain his presence were they to turn up, and it no longer troubled him, because the pieces of the puzzle were slotting into place. He also now saw that the puzzle was different from what he’d expected or assumed.

Every so often he looked at his watch. It was nearly an hour before he found what he wanted.

A little notebook: it was written in Latin. McGovern had no Latin, but he did recognise Roman numerals and worked out that sums of money were set against Latinised names, with dates. At the back of the notebook a second set of notes appeared to record purchases of objects, some of which were recognisable as referring to the antiquities he collected: ‘Minerva’, for example.

It was simple and made perfect sense. Quinault obtained money for the artefacts he collected by means of blackmail. It might well be that the objects themselves were illegally obtained, looted from neglected sites in Asia Minor or the Middle East. That would make them very pricey. He slipped the notebook into his pocket.

The girl’s bike was where he’d left it in the shrubbery. He biked into the centre of Oxford and made his way back to Corpus Christi.

There was an ambulance outside the college. A police car had parked further along the lane.

The porter’s lodge was unattended. Policemen hurried in and out. Cyclists, one with a scholar’s gown billowing out like a witch, skidded along the lane. Several groups of two or three undergraduates loitered in the quad. He asked one of the young men what had happened.

‘One of the Fellows has died.’

At the police station, Detective Sergeant Venables was redder-faced and more distracted than ever.

‘Two unexpected deaths like this in the past week! What a kerfuffle! Of course, in the Professor’s case, there’s nothing suspicious.’

McGovern could not deceive himself; he was bitterly disappointed. He’d been cheated. It was a shameful thought, but it was so. He was furious. The old bastard had had the temerity to die on him.

‘What happened?’

‘Heart failure. Apparently he had a heart condition.’

‘I’ll be returning to London shortly. I don’t think I’ll be back. My work here is completed.’

Sergeant Venables looked, thought McGovern, both surprised and relieved. ‘There weren’t any problems?’ It was only half a question.

‘None relevant to the inquiry. Obviously Ferenczy’s death was tragic.’

‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ Venables looked solemn. ‘You were informed, I take it, that we did find a suicide note?’

‘No.’

‘Apologies – apologies. An oversight. One of his friends found it.’

‘Thank you for letting me know.’

Outside the police station McGovern stood, looked round. He still had the borrowed bicycle and decided to ride up to Headington before he left town.

Sally Mabledon was as usual entrenched behind piles of paperwork. She seemed genuinely pleased to see him.

‘I’ve come to say goodbye,’ he said, ‘my work here’s finished now.’

‘Right.’ She looked slightly puzzled. ‘Was it – had it to do with poor Andras, then?’

‘No. I wondered if Irén was around?’

‘Probably. Have you looked in the common room?’

Irén was seated cross-legged on a sagging sofa, holding court to two new admirers. She leapt up when she saw McGovern.

‘Oh, you are back! I thought you would come again, after Andras—’

‘I think it’s time I invited you for that coffee, isn’t it?’

This time he left the bike behind. They took a bus into the centre.

‘There’s a coffee bar on Broad Street,’ he suggested.

‘I know. The Cadena. A famous poet sits there. W.H. Auden, he is called.’

They walked through from the High Street and past the Sheldonian. Irén peered through the window. ‘Oh, I think he is not there today. Never mind. At last, a really good cup of coffee. Thank you.’

He smiled. She wore her black beret at a rakish angle. He admired her vivacity. To have come through the turmoil of the crushed revolution and still to be so full of life was admirable.

‘You can have a bun too, if you like.’

‘Oh please! I love these British buns. They are rather horrible, but I like them.’

‘Or have a brandy snap.’

‘What is a brandy snap?’

He ordered one.

‘So what will you do, Irén?’

Her smile, so mischievous, suggested more than words could. ‘I shall do many things.’ She was so full of hope for the future. McGovern envied her cruel capacity to go forward ruthlessly, to leave disaster behind.

‘I wanted to ask you about Andras. I was very sorry he drowned. He wasn’t like you, was he? He couldn’t leave the past behind. Or perhaps he was just too burdened by his doubts and his unhappiness. The police told me he did leave a note, so it seems clear it was suicide. I wanted to ask about the note. The Sergeant said one of his friends had found it. Is that right?’

‘I found it. At least …’ and she looked up at him from under her short black lashes, ‘it was not exactly a suicide note, but it was something he wrote in a notebook about how unhappy he was. So it was
like
a suicide note. And I thought it is better it is suicide, otherwise it is worse for his family – I suppose they will be told this has happened.’

‘I don’t understand. Wouldn’t they prefer it to be just a terrible accident? Not that anything could be much comfort. But suicide—’

‘They will never think it is an accident.’

‘Are you saying it might not be an accident or suicide, after all?’

‘I don’t know, but you see in his notebook there was more. He did not say all the truth – to me, I mean – about the men. You remember the men who came to see him? I told you? They wanted him to spy for them, if he does this they will see he stays in this country, does not go to Canada. He would stay here with Gyorgy. They even said they will arrange for him to go to Cambridge with Gyorgy.’

‘I too found out more about those men.’ He had telephoned a contact. ‘They are Hungarians, but they work for us, for the British. They have lived here a long time, well, since the war. They fled the communist regime. They’d been supporters of Horthy, of the fascists. But now they are working for us. However, what I don’t know is how they were trying to use him, or what they thought they’d get out of him.’ He found it all immensely depressing.

‘Well, he does not know what to believe. He is so – he is in big conflict. So in the end, I think he did drown himself. He couldn’t swim, you know.’

‘What other explanation is there, unless it was an accident?’

‘Could these men have done this? Pushed him in?’

‘But if what Andras wrote was true, they wanted him to spy for them, Irén. They were hardly going to murder him.’

‘Well – you are right. They would not do this. Yet you do not know what they might do. But I think we have to believe – I think it is better – that he drowned himself.’

‘Yes. I think we probably do.’

chapter
47

A
RCHIE LE SAUX WAS ARRESTED.
The suspect put up no defence at all. He made no attempt to deny that he’d stabbed Tony Marx, although he wouldn’t admit that it was on his uncle’s orders. Jarrell, watching him, saw that some central spring was broken. He offered a few excuses: that Tony Marx had double-crossed his uncle; that he hadn’t meant actually to kill Marx, only wound him; and that Marx had a knife, so he’d acted essentially in self-defence. But it was all without conviction. He seemed hardly to care what happened.

‘So your uncle threatened Signorelli, the witness.’

Le Saux drew his hand across his eyes. ‘I’m tired,’ he said.

‘Just a few more questions.’ Jarrell wanted to be as brisk as possible. ‘We have to talk about Valerie.’

Le Saux sat low in his chair. His eyes seemed half closed.

‘What happened?’

Le Saux shifted around in his chair. ‘I don’t want to talk about that,’ he muttered.

‘Why not?’

‘My uncle shouldn’t’a done that. Then he wouldn’t’a got onto Val.’

‘Who wouldn’t?’

‘The copper, of course. The one in charge of the case.’

There was silence in the room.

‘Inspector Slater?’

‘Yeah – ’course.’

Le Saux was charged with the murder of Tony Marx. Now Jarrell was seated with McGovern in the Superintendent’s office for the debriefing. Jarrell cleared his throat. To accuse a fellow officer was a serious matter.

‘Le Saux still maintains that Mallory was really to blame for what happened. He sacked Valerie Jarvis because he was furious to find Valerie was in love with him – with Le Saux, that is. Not because of Valerie, but because he thought it reflected badly on the Ambassadors.’

‘Slater, meanwhile, was furious that Maurice Le Saux, the uncle, had frightened Signorelli off. But then he saw a different opportunity. Valerie Jarvis had been sacked and her boyfriend was in a bad way. Now she hadn’t any money. Her lover was a wanted man. Le Saux swears she believed him innocent. But Slater didn’t know that. It may not be true, anyway. Slater got hold of the girl. He tried to get her to talk, took her to the hotel. He could do what he liked with her there, I assume. Camenzuli was his grass. His creature, really. Things got a bit rough and – well, he killed her.’

‘So the doctor got it wrong when he said she was dead on arrival.’ McGovern frowned. ‘Why did he say that?’

‘I don’t know. And he can’t tell us.’

‘That information came from your reporter friend, didn’t it?’ Moules’ spectacles glittered. ‘Perhaps he misunderstood. Unless Camenzuli corroborates Le Saux’s story we won’t get far with this. We can’t charge an officer on the basis of some rigmarole by a man we’ve just charged with murder.’

‘Camenzuli will corroborate,’ stated Jarrell confidently. ‘Mind you, we’ll still get him on another charge – accessory after the fact – perverting the course of justice.’

‘And what about Mrs Camenzuli, who seems to have disappeared?’

‘We believe it was Mrs Mallory. She was afraid her husband was guilty of Valerie’s murder. She heard about the row when Valerie was sacked and jumped to the conclusion that Mallory had done it. She cast around for an alternative suspect. And lo and behold! Good news – the Maltese was arrested and once he was inside Mrs Mallory persuaded his wife to get her husband to confess.’

‘That seems implausible to me,’ said Moules. He was fidgeting with his desk accessories more than ever.

‘With respect, sir, I haven’t finished. The question is why Slater needed Valerie’s evidence, why he needed her to tell him Archie had killed Tony Marx when there was the evidence of the chef, Signorelli. Did he perhaps need more evidence because Signorelli’s wasn’t definite enough? But it seemed to be extremely clear.

‘Yet Slater went round to the girl’s flat – room, I think it was, really – and the landlady said she’d left with him. Not exactly arrested, but she didn’t want to go. Under some sort of duress. That’s Archie Le Saux’s story, anyway. Le Saux recognised Slater from the landlady’s description. The next thing was, Valerie Jarvis was dead.

‘Camenzuli knew what had happened at the hotel, of course, because he was there. And no need to call the police because a policeman was there already: Slater. Of course, Slater didn’t let on he’d been there himself, but he was able to play it all down. The investigation wasn’t taken seriously.

‘On the other hand, Archie Le Saux also knew, or at least guessed, what had happened. So Archie told his uncle. And then all Maurice Le Saux had to do was make it clear to Slater that his nephew was not going to be arrested. Slater buried the evidence – though I must say he didn’t bury it very deep – and cooked up another suspect, a suspect who turned out to have a very strong alibi. That may have suited Slater too, because by now the whole case was a mess. If he managed to frame someone it might all come apart in court – or earlier. It was better simply not to solve the crime, to kick it into the long grass. Difficult in the short run, but in the long run he hoped it would just go away – like the death of Valerie Jarvis promised to do.’

There was silence in the room. McGovern pictured the scene in the hotel. Why had Slater taken her there? Did he not want to question her at the station? Because whatever happened, Camenzuli would never talk?

Moules passed his hand across his forehead. ‘I am simply astonished,’ he said eventually, ‘that Slater thought he could get away with it. But how very stupid of him to have killed the girl.’

McGovern met Blackstone in the Queen’s Head, just as he had that first time, in November, months ago. The press of recent events was difficult to assimilate. He needed time to sort through facts and separate them from surmise and fiction. It was not a bad idea to mull things over with Blackstone.

Blackstone looked stunned when he heard Le Saux’s story. ‘To be honest,’ he said, ‘it hurts my professional pride. I’m usually pretty quick to hear the rumours. That story must have been buzzing around the underworld like nobody’s business.’

‘Maybe not. Maurice Le Saux would want it kept quiet.’

‘To think – we were the last to know. How bloody humiliating. I need another drink.’ It was McGovern’s round. When he returned with a whisky and a beer, Blackstone said: ‘I always knew Slater was a bit crazy.’

‘We haven’t got him yet. Jarrell’s interviewing Camenzuli again tomorrow.’

‘It breaks my heart. It makes me sick to think of it. He just batted her away like a fly. Snuffed out her life. She was just a young girl. With her whole life before her.’