The High Flyer (22 page)

VIII

“How long has Kim been anti-Christian?” asked Nicholas neutrally after I had talked for some time about the deterioration of my relationship with Kim as the result of the miasma generated by Mrs. Mayfield.

I thought hard. “When I first knew him,” I said at last, “he seemed reasonably tolerant of Christianity—he certainly made me conscious of my ignorance about religious matters and gave me the impression that Christianity was a belief system which only the ignorant slagged off.”

“And later?”

“Later . . . after he started seeing Mrs. Mayfield again . . . yes, he was actively hostile.”

“I’m afraid that’s a sign that he’s drifted back into her control.” Unexpectedly he swivelled his chair to face the computer. “Let’s see what the latest update is on her activities.”

I was amazed. “She’s on your computer?”

“There’s an organisation which makes a study of all these cults and groups, particularly the ones which can be destructive to the personality and result in mental breakdown. It’s an organisation we work with closely—they keep us abreast of the latest developments and we pick up the casualties they uncover.” He typed in an order while adding: “The occult scene is fragmented—there’s no great overarching organisation complete with master-mind, but some of the individual manipulators can do a lot of damage, particularly to poorly integrated personalities.”

I heard my voice ask: “What exactly is the occult?”

“Literally it’s something hidden. It describes belief systems which are built on special knowledge which is only available to the select few—as opposed to Christianity, which is based on God’s revelation in Jesus Christ and available to all.”

“The word ‘occult’ is used very loosely and inaccurately nowadays,” remarked Lewis, sketching a witch on his notepad. “People use it to describe anything from Wicca practices to Satanism, but strictly speaking, occultists are devotees of Gnostic ideas propounded in various esoteric books which have been enjoying a revival in recent times.”

“But surely this is all quite harmless?”

“Certainly it can feature eccentrics who are more pathetic than dangerous. But unfortunately these societies can be infiltrated and corrupted by a wide range of undesirables: people who get their kicks out of power, people who are addicted to manipulating others and people who are dedicated to destroying things as painfully and nastily as possible.”

“But why can’t the police be involved?”

“They are,” said Nicholas, tapping the keys again with a new instruction. “We often work with them, but people like Mrs. Mayfield are usually skilled at operating just within the law . . . Ah, here we go. Mrs. Elizabeth Mayfield, aged fifty-one, nationality British, no husband, an address in Fulham, currently operating as a psychic healer, no professional qualifications, runs groups in Hendon, Hammersmith and Wapping—”

“Wapping’s where Kim went last night.”

“—possible links with a pornography ring but nothing proven . . . associated with past sex-groups but nothing criminal proven . . . questioned by police over distribution of obscene videos but no charges brought. However, if we go further back we find a criminal record. We have soliciting, procuring, perjury, indecent assault on a minor—”

“Christ!” I exclaimed before remembering where I was. In embarrassment I muttered: “Excuse me.”

“Colourful stuff, isn’t it?” said Nicholas, gaze still on the screen. “But all that was back in the 1960s. She did time and emerged wise enough to set herself up behind a respectable façade. She disappeared for a while in the late seventies and early eighties, but she wasn’t in prison and the police suspect she may have been operating under another identity for reasons which aren’t clear but which could be consonant with criminal activity and/or occult involvement—and I’m now using the word ‘occult’ in its strict sense.”

“That’s why Sophie’s mention of the occult is so interesting to us,” said Lewis abruptly to me. “Was Sophie using the word loosely, as so many people do nowadays, or was she talking specifically about an occult society?”

Nicholas added in explanation: “We’ve never known for a fact that Mrs. Mayfield is involved in any occult society. We know she’s a psychic who advertises as a healer and makes money out of vulnerable people; we know she runs sex-groups under the guise of group therapy; we suspect that in these areas she stays within the law by never dabbling in extortion and always dealing with consenting adults—though we know she does a great deal of psychological damage and can bring those adults to breakdown. But we’ve never been able to connect her with any corrupt occult society which would inevitably be involved in criminal activity.”

I swallowed with difficulty. “What kind of criminal activity?”

“Blackmail. Offences with minors,” said Nicholas colourlessly, “and animals.”

“The groups usually start off by operating within certain parameters in order to obtain what they believe to be enlightenment,” said Lewis, who I was beginning to realise had no hesitation in calling a spade a spade, “but they never stay within those parameters because when people get their kicks out of perversions they always wind up needing a bigger and better fix to maintain the level of satisfaction. Usually the group divides into different levels of initiates—and there’s always an inner circle where just about anything goes.”

I slid my tongue around my lips. “Such as Satanism?”

“Not necessarily,” said Nicholas before Lewis could give another blunt reply. “The media hype up Satanism, but most of these people like Mrs. Mayfield wouldn’t call themselves Satanists and wouldn’t practise any Satanic rituals.”

Lewis said severely to him: “That doesn’t mean they’re not capable of being far more destructive than a bunch of misfits who get together to celebrate a black mass for kicks! You shouldn’t play this down, Nicholas—you shouldn’t gloss over the degradation and defilement, the abuse of the human spirit, the dismantling of personalities, the—”

“I’ve no wish to gloss over anything,” said Nicholas, “but I think we should remember we’ve no proof that Mrs. Mayfield’s involved in criminal activity, we’ve no proof that Sophie used the word ‘occult’ in a sense which might imply a corrupt society, and we’ve no proof that Kim’s secret life has ever extended beyond visits to Mrs. Mayfield in Fulham and to the group in Wapping.”

Gripping the arms of the tub-chair so hard that my fingers hurt I managed to say: “I still can’t understand how Kim, who’s a very tough, sophisticated man, could ever have got involved with someone like Mrs. Mayfield.”

But Lewis had no trouble explaining this. “You can be outwardly very tough and sophisticated,” he said, “but inwardly poorly integrated. Mrs. Mayfield has probably been exploiting an inner vulnerability which drove him to seek help originally from a strong-willed woman who would win his trust and make him feel secure.”

Nicholas added: “It would be this inner vulnerability which would make it difficult for him to leave her, and you can be sure that Mrs. Mayfield would want him to stay—she’d use all her skills in psychological manipulation to undermine his will. As a successful businessman with a wide range of wealthy contacts Kim would be a great prize for her, even if she’s not involved in the kind of occult society which always seeks such people.”

My throat began to ache. I whispered: “I’m sure he’s a good man deep down,” but as I spoke I realised I was sure of nothing now which related to Kim.

“Time to remind ourselves again about what we know and what we don’t know,” said Nicholas, instantly detecting the rise in my distress. “We know Kim’s involved with Mrs. Mayfield and at least one of her groups. But his story is that he quarrelled with her on his marriage and this could well be true—and if it
is
true this would support Carter’s belief that he’s a good man keen to make a fresh start. We don’t know for a fact that he was conspiring with Mrs. Mayfield to fake the disturbances at the flat. (All right, I haven’t forgotten the contents of the Jiffy bag but maybe he really did leave both the key and the organiser behind by mistake at Mrs. Mayfield’s house.) We also don’t know for a fact that he was in Oakshott tonight, and we certainly don’t know for a fact that he was responsible for Sophie’s death. Let’s try to keep our minds prised open an inch here.”

“What really bothers me,” I said, grateful for this reassuring perspective but still feeling distressed, “is that I keep thinking I’ve found out the whole truth but there always turns out to be more. What actually was it that Sophie wanted to tell me? At first I thought she just wanted to tip me off about his secret life with Mrs. Mayfield. Then I thought she wanted to tell me about Kim’s Nazi past and the blackmail. And finally, thanks to Mrs. Mayfield, I’m facing a story about impotence, but there’s a hole in this story, and—”

“Mrs. Mayfield was out to undermine you,” said Lewis. “Be sceptical.”

“But even if I don’t believe her, how do I avoid suspecting there’s more truth still to come out? If Kim went to Oakshott tonight to beg Sophie to keep quiet—”

“But we don’t know yet he went to Oakshott, do we?”

Nicholas, who seemed to have drifted off into a reverie during this exchange, now interrupted us. “The part I’m getting odd vibes about,” he said, “is this whole business of Kim’s Nazi past. I feel there’s something off-key here . . . Could Kim really have worked alongside Jews for years, mixed with them socially and never been detected as a fake?”

I said at once: “You misunderstand. He never claimed to be Jewish and he never claimed to have been brought up in the Jewish religion. He just represented himself as a sympathetic fellow-traveller, someone with a Jewish father but no real Jewish background.”

“But if he’s taken great care to pass himself off as a fellow-traveller for years, doesn’t this blackmail story of his make him seem uncharacteristically foolhardy? He was very cavalier in divulging potentially fatal information to this stranger who could just as easily have been a Jew as a gentile!”

“I thought that too,” I said, “but I’m sure the blackmail happened. Why invent such a story when he could blame a stockmarket disaster for his lack of capital?”

“Maybe his pride told him he wasn’t the kind of man to have a stockmarket disaster. And maybe he needed to cover up the fact that he’d been paying large sums to Mrs. Mayfield.”

“But he said how reasonable her charges were!”

“There’d inevitably be donations as well, probably to an offshore account.”

“Wait a minute,” said Lewis suddenly. “Let’s assume he really has been blackmailed; I doubt if the donations to Mrs. Mayfield would explain a major hole in his capital, because she wouldn’t want to alienate him by being extortionate. But let’s also assume that the true story of the blackmail is something he’s still covering up. If you were Kim, Nicholas, and you had a very unpleasant secret in your past which had ultimately resulted in blackmail, how do you prevent your second wife from learning about it when your first wife is dead keen to spill the beans? Answer: You keep the two women apart, you destroy your first wife’s credibility and finally you dredge up for your second wife another very unpleasant secret, such as your Nazi past, to act as a red herring.”

“No, that won’t wash,” I said promptly. “He didn’t tell me about the Nazi past voluntarily. Unless . . .” My voice trailed away.

“The disclosure by Mandy Simmons could have been staged,” said Nicholas with reluctance. “He’d need an excuse to bring such a secret out into the open.”

“Playing the Nazi card would have had several advantages,” pursued Lewis. “He not only makes it look as if
this
is the secret Sophie’s trying to divulge and thus kills Carter’s curiosity; the admission encourages Carter to show additional sympathy for him by revealing that he too was a victim of the Nazi madness, and it also allows him to show Sophie in an unsympathetic light by claiming she rejected him when he confided in her. And finally the story enables the blackmail to be plausibly relocated in a different set of circumstances in order to explain the hole in his capital. The only slip-up he made was not making the blackmail story more convincing, but on the whole I think he was very clever.”

“Time to rein ourselves in again,” said Nicholas, seeing my appalled expression. “This is just speculation. In fact all this conversation proves, Carter, is that Lewis and I are having a hard time building up a clear picture of Kim and that it’s vital we should meet him as soon as possible.”

As if on cue a bell jangled in the distance and a thunderous knocking broke out on the front door.

I

“Remember,” said Nicholas swiftly as the shock made me leap to my feet, “you don’t have to see him. But a meeting might be helpful in resolving the unanswered questions.”

“So long as you two are here I don’t mind.”

Nicholas moved at once towards the hall. As he passed Lewis he said: “You play Mr. Nice-Guy,” and Lewis gave a grunt of assent before slipping his notepad beneath a pile of files.

I heard Nicholas open the front door. By this time Lewis was standing very close to me as if he were a bodyguard whose client needed the highest level of protection.

In the hall Nicholas was saying politely: “Mr. Betz?” and Kim was demanding: “What the hell’s going on?” before shouting at the top of his voice: “Carter, where are you?”

“What a way to behave!” I muttered furiously, but I was sweating with fright and dread.

Lewis muttered: “If the worst comes to the worst there’s a panic button which connects us to the Wood Street police station,” but before I could ask him where the button was I heard Nicholas say, still faultlessly courteous: “Your wife’s in my study. If you’d like to come this way—”

Kim erupted into the room but stopped dead when he saw I was screened by a bodyguard.

“Mr. Betz!” exclaimed Lewis in delight. “We’re so glad you’re finally here!”

“Fuck off,” said Kim brutally, and swung to face me. “Carter—”

I made the split-second decision that attack was the best defence. “For God’s sake, Betz!” I yelled, launching straight into “the slammer.” “Shape up before these guys decide you need a head transplant! Where the hell have you been and what the hell’s going on?”

“That’s exactly what I was going to ask you! Listen, sweetheart—”

“Shut up! I’ve had the worst evening of my entire life, I’ve been scared out of my skull, I’m absolutely on the ropes—and now, to cap it all, I have to cope with you behaving like a bloody stormtrooper!”

“I’m sorry, but I’m appalled that you should be hiding out here with these two fakers, and what I want to know is—”

“These two
gentlemen
—repeat, GENTLEMEN—have been telling me all about Mrs. Mayfield! They know—”

“I don’t give a shit what they know! What
I
want to know is what the fuck’s been going on at the flat!”

“Your evil old cow trashed it! She’s bored with your plan to discredit Sophie and she’s now trying to terminate your second marriage by driving me out of my mind!”

“Don’t be ridiculous! Look, we have to talk right away, and if you think I’m going to spill my guts out in front of—”

“I’ve already told them everything.”

“You’ve
what
?” He was so shocked that he swayed on his feet. He even reached out for the edge of the table to steady himself, and I felt the balance of power shift between us as his anger dissolved into confusion.

“It’s all right,” I said automatically, “there’s confidentiality. If you could just stop playing the stormtrooper for a moment—”

“Okay, okay, okay.” He finally came to his senses and tried to remodel the tough line. “I’m sure we can work this out,” he said, “but please—let’s have a couple of minutes together on our own.” And before I could reply he was adding to the men: “I’m sorry. Excuse me. I’ve been out of my mind with worry and stress.”

At once Lewis said sympathetically: “Of course,” and it was left to Nicholas to ask in a neutral voice: “How do you feel about this suggestion, Carter?”

“I’ll go along with it,” I said, “because I think it’ll be the quickest route to achieving a discussion between the four of us, but I want to remain within sight of you and Lewis.”

We rearranged ourselves. Nicholas and Lewis stayed in the study but the door was left wide open so that they could see me as I withdrew with Kim to the far side of the hall. Leaning against the banisters at the foot of the stairs I glanced past Kim to Nicholas, who was standing with his right hand resting on his desk. I was suddenly sure his fingers were inches from the panic button; feeling more secure I turned to Kim but before I could utter a word he was saying in a low voice: “I love you. No matter what’s happened, that hasn’t changed.”

This was so very much the last thing I expected him to say that I was disarmed. The balance of power shifted again, hovering in an uncertain equilibrium.

“Hell, you’re sexy when you act tough!” he murmured, capitalising on the moment of intimacy. “If we were alone now—”

“Skip the gloss, buster. You were at Oakshott tonight, weren’t you?”

Instantly he abandoned the attempt to sweet-talk me. “No, I was with Warren at the Savoy. Why should you think—”

“Did you kill her?”

He was stunned, so stunned that he was unable to rewrite his script. All he could do was whisper incredulously: “How on earth did you know she was dead?”

“You think I didn’t go through that unlocked back door and look for her?”

“But I figured you’d just ring the front doorbell a couple of times, hang around for a few minutes and then go away! You mean you actually went round to the back and—”

“Kim, did you kill her?”

“For Christ’s sake, no, of course not!”

“But you were there. Who else would have wiped my message from the answering machine?”

“Okay, I was there, but—”

“Was the death an accident?”

“God knows! When I found her dead I panicked—I know you’ll find that hard to believe, but—”

“No, I panicked too—I went around wiping away my fingerprints. I must have been out of my mind.”

“Then that makes two of us. God, if we both tinkered around with what may prove to be a crime scene—”

“—we’ll be in deep professional shit. But listen, Kim, what the hell do you think happened?”

“It did look like an accident.” He ran his fingers distractedly through his hair. “But on the other hand—”

“A nutter could have got in. If she was out gardening with the back door unlocked and the alarm not set—”

“I noticed the gardening gear on the kitchen table.”

“But would she have been gardening while wearing that rather smart red suit?”

“Oh, that was as old as the hills, strictly for pottering around in. Sophie didn’t like trousers. Her idea of casualwear was old clothes.”

“Okay, so if we assume she was gardening—no, let’s hold this discussion right there and go back to the clerics. I want them to hear this.”

“But I don’t understand—why involve them? In fact how on earth did you manage to wind up here?”

“I’ll explain later.”

“But Carter, listen—I don’t think we should discuss this mess with anyone right now—”

“I told you—I’ve already done it. Oh, and by the way, you should know about my one lie. I told the clerics I made an anonymous call to tip off the police once I was on my way back to London. I didn’t want them getting hung up on the morality of—”

“Of course not. But why continue to confide in these guys? After all, what can two clergymen possibly know about the world you and I move in?”

“More than you can begin to imagine,” I said drily, and headed back into the study.

He followed more slowly, trailing behind, his fists shoved deep into his pockets and reluctance engraved in every line of his tense, shadowed face.

II

“Have a seat here at the table with me,” said Lewis sociably to Kim. “By the way, may I offer you some whisky?”

Kim was so surprised that it took him a moment to say: “Thank you. With soda, please.”

Lewis disappeared. When Kim and I were both sitting down I said to Nicholas: “We’ve decided to have an exchange of information.”

Kim said abruptly: “You mean you’ve decided. I’m only going along with this because—” But he clearly could not think of a reason which did not look like a loss of face.

“I expect,” said Nicholas peacefully, “you want to make a gesture of support to your wife.”

Kim looked relieved to have his behaviour explained in a way which showed him in a passable light, but he was still shifting uneasily in his chair when Lewis returned with a glass of whisky and soda.

“What you two have to take on board,” said Kim after he had taken a sip, “is that I love my wife. I know it must be looking to you as if we’re going through a rough patch, but we’re going to win through. My marriage means everything to me.”

Lewis murmured: “I understand you haven’t been married long.”

“Just a few months.”

Lewis took out his packet of cigarettes. “Smoke?”

“I gave up. Except for the occasional cigar.”

“Congratulations! That’s a feat I’ve never been able to achieve. Will it bother you if I—”

“No, go ahead.”

This odd little social exchange, reminiscent of the early stages of a cocktail party before the drink had started to flow, somehow seemed to lighten the atmosphere, normalising it, finally achieving the conversion of a violent scene into a business meeting.

“Carter,” said Nicholas, slipping effortlessly into the role of chairman, “since Kim’s made his gesture of support, would you care to reciprocate by giving him a summary of what happened tonight up to the moment when you reached the flat?”

Well accustomed to performing at business meetings, I found myself embarking on a workmanlike narrative.

III

My monologue was only derailed when I revealed my decision to search Sophie’s desk.

“But what did you think you’d find?” demanded Kim, apparently astonished.

“The truth, of course! What else? The truth about your past, the truth about your first marriage—”

“But I’d told you the truth!”

“Let’s just pass that up for now,” said Nicholas, “and stick to the narrative. Go on, Carter.”

“Don’t try and con me,” I said fiercely to Kim. “I’m no whippet with minimal p.q.e. who can’t figure out a fluffed-up contract! If you didn’t have more unpleasant truths to hide, why did you rush to Oakshott to get to Sophie before I did?”

“Hold it,” said Nicholas, determined to rein me in. “We’ll find out exactly what Kim did in a minute. Let’s just complete your story.”

“I rifled the desk,” I said, willing enough to continue now that I had warned Kim not to mess me around, “and found the files which related to legal matters, but the divorce file was missing. There was also a locked drawer which proved to be empty. I then left the house and returned to London. End of story.” I swung back to Kim. “What did you remove from that locked drawer?”

He sighed but admitted willingly enough: “Love-letters. Apparently she’d had an affair some years ago but the man had broken it off.”

“But she was so moral! She was a Christian!”

“Not all Christians are saints.” He gestured to the clerics. “Ask them.”

“I’m afraid that’s true,” said Lewis. “Human nature being what it is, we can’t always live up to our ideals.”

I said to Kim: “I don’t understand your motivation for taking this file.”

“As a matter of fact it was a large brown envelope, not a file. I took it because . . . well, this may sound odd but I felt it was something I could do for Sophie. I didn’t want that piece of gossip to get out into the community where she was respected.”

“I’m sure I’d have felt the same if I’d been you,” said Lewis sympathetically, and added: “I was married once myself.”

“Then you’ll understand my second reason for not wanting the letters to become public: I didn’t want anyone to know my wife had been unfaithful. It was a question of what the feminists call ‘macho pride.’ ”

“Ah well,” said Lewis with a thin little smile and a shrug of his shoulders, “feminists . . .”

Nicholas cleared his throat, as if he felt all this male bonding might prove excessive, and said crisply before I could unleash a response: “Thank you, Carter, for that summary. Now, Kim, perhaps you could start your own narrative by telling us when you made the decision to go down to Surrey.”

Kim drained his glass and held it out to Lewis. “Can I please cadge some more of this stuff?”

The manoeuvre gave him extra time to think, of course. To my dismay I realised he could still be deciding to lie to the back teeth.

IV

“I came out of a long meeting,” said Kim when Lewis returned with the refilled glass, “and was told that Mrs. Mayfield had called.” He paused. “I’m not sure how far I should backtrack to explain about the disturbances in the flat.”

“We’ll get to the disturbances later. Keep going.”

“Well, when I called her back she said Carter had caught her on the podium and accused her of trespass and malicious damage. Carter had already accused me of trashing the place earlier. I said to Elizabeth—to Mrs. Mayfield—that it sounded to me as if Carter would see her presence near Harvey Tower as proof we were engaged in a conspiracy to discredit Sophie, and that Carter was now going to want to see Sophie to find out why she needed to be discredited. I said to Mrs. Mayfield that I’d go straight down to Surrey to work something out, but she advised me against that and offered to see Sophie herself.”

“Obviously the hag got straight into her car and drove down to Oakshott,” I said. “I think—”

“Yes, I can imagine what you think, but you’re wrong. Carter, when I phoned Elizabeth back from my office at ten to six this evening I was calling a number in north London which she had given Mary earlier— after leaving the Barbican she’d gone out to Hendon where she had an engagement tonight.”

“Where she planned to prance around with another of her bloody groups, you mean!”

“I take your point,” said Nicholas swiftly to Kim to keep the narration on track. “You’re saying that if Mrs. Mayfield was in Hendon, not Fulham, she couldn’t have killed Sophie before you arrived on the scene. But how do you know when Sophie died?”

“The body was still warm when I found her, so she couldn’t have been dead long. And incidentally I really didn’t want Elizabeth to go to Oakshott. By that time I was sure appeasement, not intimidation, was my only hope of neutralising Sophie.”

“Would you mind not calling Mayfield Elizabeth?” I said. “It makes me want to puke.”

“Let’s just recap for a moment,” said Nicholas, making another skilful intervention. “You talked to Mrs. Mayfield. She advised you not to go to Oakshott and offered to go herself, but—”

“—I refused the offer and ignored her advice. After this phone call I immediately tried to get hold of Carter but she wasn’t at the office, and I was just considering the horrific possibility that she’d already left for Oakshott when she rang from the flat and said she was going to be dining out with a friend. (Of course I didn’t believe her.) I then said I was going to be spending the evening at the Savoy with an American colleague of mine, but as soon as the call ended I took a cab to the garage at Harvey Tower. When I saw Carter’s Porsche was still there I was enormously relieved because I knew I’d have that vital headstart on the journey to Oakshott.”

“So you left London.”

“Yes, but I didn’t call ahead to warn Sophie I was coming until I’d taken the Oakshott exit off the A3. I hadn’t intended to call her at all, but then I realised that if I just turned up on her doorstep she might be intimidated and I didn’t want the meeting getting off to a bad start. When there was no reply to my call from the car-phone I was surprised as I didn’t think she went out much in the evenings, but I was confident she wouldn’t be late back. I left a message and drove on.”

“Did you have a key?”

“No, Sophie had the locks changed after I left home. We used to leave a spare key in the outside lavatory, but she’d changed that hiding-place too along with the locks—as I discovered when there was no response to the front doorbell. At that point I tried the handle of the back door more out of frustration than any real hope of finding it unlocked, and lo and behold, it opened. When I found the alarm was off I was concerned because I felt sure Sophie wouldn’t normally have gone out without leaving the house locked and the alarm set, so even before I found the body I was prepared for something bad to have happened.”

“What did you do when you found her?”

“Made sure she was dead. After that I saw the broken heel of her shoe and decided the death was probably an accident, but at the same time I knew she could have been killed by a madman. There was evidence that she’d been gardening . . . someone could have slipped into the house . . . anyway, when I considered the possibility of murder I’m ashamed to say I lost my nerve, so . . .” He hesitated.

“So you took evasive action,” said Lewis, still exuding sympathy.

“Right. I found the answering machine and played back the tape. To my horror I heard Carter had also left a message to say she was on her way, and I certainly didn’t want her involved in the mess. I wiped the tape.”

“Were you worried that Carter might arrive at any moment?”

“No, on the tape she’d said when she was leaving London and I figured I was safe for at least another twenty minutes, particularly since she had to find the house.”

“Was it then that you searched the desk?”

“No, I then drew the ground-floor curtains to give Carter the impression that Sophie had gone out, leaving a few lights on and the curtains closed to await her return after dark. But after I’d done that, yes, I went to the desk and removed the large brown envelope along with the divorce file. I knew her lawyers would have copies of all the divorce correspondence, but I didn’t want her relatives paddling through letters which could have contained very private and personal information.”

“I don’t suppose you were keen on me doing any paddling either,” I said.

“Sweetheart, I told you—I never thought you’d enter the house!”

“Obviously there was no time to read the file at that moment,” said Nicholas, “but did you take a look later?”

“Yes, on the way home I pulled off the A3 and had a quick flick through, but as far as I could see it was all standard stuff, nothing dramatic at all.”

“Sez you,” I muttered before demanding sharply: “Where’s that file now—outside in your car?”

“No, when I finally got back to the Barbican after dining with Warren I took both the file and the envelope of love-letters up to the flat so that I could examine them properly, but as soon as I got inside and saw the mess—”

“Hold it,” said Nicholas. “We’ve skipped a bit. What did you do after your quick flick through the divorce file in the car?”

“I called Mrs. Mayfield—or at least, I tried to but I didn’t succeed because I couldn’t remember all the digits of that Hendon number. I then called my New York colleague, Warren Schaeffer, at the Savoy, and told him I wanted to stop by—I’d actually called him earlier, before I left the office, to ask him to cover for me if Carter rang up to check where I was, and he’d promised to tell the switchboard not to put through any calls made by a woman. I’d done the same thing for him once in New York when he was in a tight marital corner, so I knew he’d be happy to oblige.”

“I’d realised you were lying about having a business meeting with Warren,” I said. “If that had been true, you’d have picked up your organiser.”

Before Kim could attempt a reply Nicholas asked: “What time did you get to the Savoy?”

“Not long after eight-thirty. But when I reached the Savoy I didn’t go to the reception desk to ask for Warren because I didn’t want any of the staff there remembering when I’d arrived; I thought I should make at least some attempt to set up an alibi. So I parked the car down by the river and slipped in the Embankment entrance when the doorman was busy hailing a taxi. Then I went straight up to Warren’s suite—he’d already told me the number.”

“And you dined with him.”

“In the Grill, yes, at around nine-thirty—his stomach was still on New York time. We had drinks in his room first and also in the bar afterwards.”

“Did you try calling Mrs. Mayfield again?”

“I tried the Fulham number when I got back to my car but she was still out. I left a message and drove on to the Barbican.”

“And at Harvey Tower—”

“I found no Carter, the flat a shambles and your message on the answerphone.” He turned to me again in what appeared to be genuine bewilderment. “Why on earth did you smash up the flat?”

“
Me?
” I cried. “But it was that arch-cow Mayfield!”

“I’m certain that’s not true.”

“Well, if I didn’t,” I said heatedly, “and you didn’t and she didn’t, who the hell did?”

“Perhaps this is the moment,” said Nicholas, “to try to establish with Kim’s help exactly who caused these disturbances.”

I said at once to Kim: “It was a conspiracy, wasn’t it?”

“Well, yes and no,” said Kim confused. “Certainly nothing could have happened this evening. You must have done it yourself in some kind of trance—what do the psychologists call it? A fugue.”

“I damn well did not!”

“May I intervene,” said Nicholas, “before this argument gets too circular? Let’s start at the beginning. Now, the first incident, if I remember correctly, was the smashing of the print of Kim’s Oxford college. Can you both agree on who did that?”

“It was an accident caused by the vibrations of the building,” said Kim without hesitation, but I answered: “It could have been an accident. But it could also have been the first act of a conspiracy.”

“No, it was a genuine accident,” insisted Kim, “but it did give me the idea about how I could destroy Sophie’s credibility by suggesting she was demented.”

“You see?” I said triumphantly to Nicholas and Lewis. “He’s confessing to a conspiracy!”

“But it wasn’t operating today,” said Kim, deflating me. “Mrs. Mayfield dropped out.”