The Murder Room (35 page)

The wine was excellent, the temperature right. Dalgliesh asked, “How did you come to help at the Dupayne Museum?”

“Through my husband. He was a history professor at London University and knew Max Dupayne. After Christopher died, Max asked if I could help with the lettering. Then when Caroline Dupayne took over I continued. James Calder-Hale took charge of the volunteers and cut down the numbers considerably, some thought rather ruthlessly. He said there were too many people running about the museum like rabbits; lonely, most of them. We all had to have a useful job to stay on. Actually we could do with a few extras now, but Mr. Calder-Hale seems reluctant to recruit them. Muriel Godby would welcome some help on the desk, provided we could find the right person. At present I relieve her occasionally when I'm in the museum.”

Dalgliesh said, “She seems very efficient.”

“She is. She's made a great difference since she arrived two years ago. Caroline Dupayne has never taken a very active part in the day-to-day management. She can't, of course, with her duties at the school. Miss Godby does the accounts to the satisfaction of the auditor and everything runs much more smoothly now. But you're not here to be bored with details of the office, are you? You want to talk about Neville's death.”

“How well did you know him?”

She paused, then sipped her wine and put down the glass. She said, “I think I knew him better than anyone else at the museum. He wasn't an easy man to know and he came in seldom, but during the past year he'd occasionally arrive early on a Friday and come in to the library. It didn't happen often, about once every three weeks or so. He gave no explanation. Sometimes he would prowl around then settle down with an old
Blackwood's Magazine.
Sometimes he'd ask me to unlock a cabinet and he'd take down a book. Mostly he sat in silence. Sometimes he talked.”

“Would you describe him as a happy man?”

“No, I wouldn't. It isn't easy to judge another's happiness, is it? But he was overworked, worried that he was letting down his patients, that he hadn't enough time for them, and angry about the state of the psychiatric services. He thought that neither the government nor society generally cared enough about the mentally ill.”

Dalgliesh wondered whether Dupayne had confided where he went at the weekends or whether only Angela Faraday had been told. He asked and she said, “No. He was reticent about his own affairs. We spoke only once about his personal life. I think he came because he found it restful to watch me working. I've been thinking about it and that seems the likeliest explanation. I would always go on with what I was doing and he liked to watch the letters forming. Perhaps he found it soothing.”

Dalgliesh said, “We're treating his death as murder. It seems highly unlikely to have been suicide. But would that surprise you, the thought that he might have wanted to end his life?”

And now the old voice, which had been tiring, regained its strength. It was with firmness that she said, “It would amaze me. He wouldn't commit suicide. You can discount that possibility. There may be members of the family who find the idea convenient, but you can put it out of mind. Neville didn't kill himself.”

“Can you really be that sure?”

“I can be that sure. Part of the reason is a discussion we had two weeks before he died. That would be the Friday before you first came to the museum. He said that his car wasn't absolutely ready. A man at the garage—I think his name is Stanley Carter—had promised to deliver it by six-fifteen. I stayed on after the museum closed and we had a whole hour together. We were speaking about the future of the library and he said that we lived too much in the past. He was thinking of our own pasts, as well as of our history. I found that I was confiding in him. I find this difficult, Commander. Private confidences aren't natural to me. I would have thought it presumptuous and somehow demeaning to use him as my private unpaid psychiatrist, but it must have been something like that. But he used me too. We used each other. I said that in old age the past wasn't so easily shaken off. The old sins return, weighted by the years. And the nightmares, the faces of the dead who shouldn't have died come back and look, not with love, but with reproach. For some of us that small diurnal death can be a nightly descent into a very private hell. We spoke about atonement and forgiveness. I'm the only child of a devoutly Roman Catholic French mother and an atheist father. I spent much of my childhood in France. I said that believers can deal with guilt by confession, but how could those of us without faith find our peace? I remembered some words I'd read written by a philosopher, I think Roger Scruton. ‘The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation.' I told him I sometimes craved even imaginary consolation. Neville said we have to learn to absolve ourselves. The past can't be altered and we have to face it with honesty and without excuses, then put it aside; to be obsessed by guilt is a destructive indulgence. He said that to be human is to feel guilt: I am guilty therefore I am.”

She paused, but Dalgliesh didn't speak. He was waiting to know why she was so sure Dupayne hadn't committed suicide. She would come to it in her own time. He saw with compassion that the reciting of that remembered conversation was painful. She reached out a hand to the bottle of claret, but her fingers were shaking. He took the bottle and topped up both their glasses.

After a minute, she said, “One would wish in old age to remember only the happiness of life. It doesn't work like that, except for the lucky ones. Just as polio can return in some form and strike again, so can the past mistakes, the failures, the sins. He said he understood. He said, ‘My worst failure comes back to me in flames of fire.' ”

The silence was longer now. This time Dalgliesh had to ask, “Did he explain?”

“No. And I didn't ask. It wouldn't have been possible to ask. But he did say one thing. Perhaps he thought that I imagined that this had something to do with not wanting the museum to continue. Anyway, he said it had nothing to do with anyone at the Dupayne.”

“You're quite sure about that, Mrs. Strickland? What he was telling you, the failure that came back in flames of fire, had nothing to do with the museum?”

“Absolutely sure. Those were his words.”

“And suicide? You said you were confident he would never kill himself.”

“We spoke of that too. I think I said that in extreme old age one could be certain of relief before too long. I went on to say that I was content to wait for it, but even at the worst times of my life I had never thought of taking my own way out. It was then he said that he thought suicide was indefensible, except for the very old or those suffering continuous pain with no hope of relief. It left too great a burden on the bereaved. Apart from the loss, there was always guilt and a lurking horror that the impulse to self-destruction could be hereditary. I told him that I thought he was being a little hard on people who found life intolerable, that their final despair should evoke pity, not censure. After all, he was a psychiatrist, a member of the modern priesthood. Wasn't it his job to understand and absolve? He didn't resent what I said. He admitted that perhaps he had been over-emphatic. But one thing he was sure of: a person in his right mind who kills himself should always leave an explanation. The family and friends he leaves behind have a right to know why they are suffering such pain. Neville Dupayne would never have killed himself, Commander. Or perhaps it would be better to say that he would never have killed himself without leaving a letter of explanation.” She looked into Dalgliesh's eyes. “My information is that he left no letter, no explanation.”

“None was found.”

“Which is not quite the same thing.”

This time it was she who reached for the bottle and held it out. Dalgliesh shook his head but she filled her own glass. Watching her, Dalgliesh was visited by a revelation so astonishing that he spoke it naturally and almost without thinking. “Was Neville Dupayne adopted?”

Her eyes met his. “Why do you ask that, Mr. Dalgliesh?”

“I'm not sure. The question came into my mind. Forgive me.”

And now she smiled, and for a moment he could glimpse that bright loveliness which had disconcerted even the Gestapo. She said, “Forgive you? For what? You're perfectly right, he was adopted. Neville was my son, mine and Max Dupayne's. I left London for five months before the birth and he was placed with Max and Madeleine within days and later adopted. Those things were arranged much more easily in those days.”

Dalgliesh asked, “Is this generally known? Do Caroline and Marcus Dupayne know that Neville was their half brother?”

“They knew he was adopted. Marcus was only a three-year-old and Caroline, of course, wasn't born when the adoption took place. All three children were told of it from an early age, but not that I was the mother and Max the father. They grew up accepting the adoption as a more or less normal fact of life.”

Dalgliesh said, “Neither of them mentioned it to me.”

“That doesn't in the least surprise me. Why should they? Neither is given to confiding private family matters and the fact that he was adopted isn't relevant to Neville's death.”

“And he never made use of the existing law to discover his parentage?”

“Never, as far as I know. This wasn't a matter I intended to discuss with you. I know I can rely on your discretion, that you won't divulge what I've told you to anyone else, not even to the members of your team.”

Dalgliesh paused. He said, “I shall say nothing unless the adoption becomes relevant to my investigation.”

And now at last it was time to go. She saw him to the door and held out her hand. Clasping it, he felt that the gesture was more than an unexpectedly formal goodbye: it was a confirmation of his promise. She said, “You have a talent for encouraging confidence, Mr. Dalgliesh. It must be useful in a detective. People tell you things that you can then use against them. I suppose you would say that it's in the cause of justice.”

“I don't think I'd use so large a word. I might say in the cause of truth.”

“Is that such a small word? Pontius Pilate didn't find it so. But I don't think I've told you anything I'm likely to regret. Neville was a good man and I shall miss him. I had a great affection for him, but no maternal love. How could I have? And what right have I, who gave him up so easily, to claim him now as my son? I'm too old to grieve, but not too old to feel anger. You'll discover who killed him and he'll be in prison for ten years. I should like to see him dead.”

On the way back to the car his mind was preoccupied with what he had learned. Mrs. Strickland had asked to see him alone to tell him two things: her absolute conviction that Neville Dupayne would not have killed himself, and his cryptic remark about seeing his failure through flames of fire. She had not intended to divulge the truth of his parentage and she was probably sincere in her belief that it wasn't relevant to her son's death. Dalgliesh was less sure. He pondered on the tangle of personal relationships focused on the museum: the traitor in the SOE who had betrayed his comrades and Henry Calder-Hale whose naÏvety had contributed to that betrayal, the secret love and the secret birth, lives lived intensely under the threat of torture and death. The agonies were over, the dead would not come back except in dreams. It was difficult to see how any of this history could provide a motive for Neville Dupayne's murder. But he could think of a reason why the Dupaynes might have thought it prudent not to divulge that Neville had been adopted. To be frustrated in what you passionately wanted by a blood brother was difficult enough to bear; from an adopted brother it would be even less forgivable, and the remedy, perhaps, easier to contemplate.

BOOK THREE

The Second Victim

WEDNESDAY 6 NOVEMBER–THURSDAY 7 NOVEMBER

1

On Wednesday the sixth of November the day broke imperceptibly, the first light seeping through an early morning sky which lay furred as a blanket over the city and river. Kate made early morning tea and, as always, carried the beaker out on to the balcony. But today there was no freshness. Beneath her the Thames heaved as sluggish as treacle, seeming to absorb rather than to reflect the dancing lights across the river. The first barges of the day moved ponderously, leaving no wake. Usually this moment was one of deep satisfaction and occasionally even of joy born of physical well-being and the promise of the new day. This river view and the two-bedroom flat behind her represented an achievement which every morning brought a renewal of satisfaction and reassurance. She had achieved the job she wanted, the flat she wanted in the part of London she had chosen. She could look forward to a promotion which it was rumoured would come soon. She worked with people she liked and respected. She told herself this morning, as she did nearly every day, that to be a single woman with your own home, a secure job and money enough for your needs, was to enjoy more freedom than did any other human being on earth.

But this morning the gloom of the day infected her. The present case was still young but it was now entering the doldrums, that depressingly familiar part of a murder investigation when the initial excitement sinks into routine and the prospect of a quick solution lessens by the day. The Special Investigation Squad weren't used to failure, were indeed regarded as a guarantee against failure. Fingerprints had been taken for elimination purposes from everyone who could legitimately have handled the can or entered the garage, and no unexplained prints had been found. No one admitted removing the lightbulb. It seemed that Vulcan, by cleverness, luck or a mixture of both, had left no incriminating evidence. It was ridiculously premature with the case so young to be worried about the outcome, but she couldn't shake off a half-superstitious fear that they might never have enough evidence to justify an arrest. And even if they did, would the CPS let the case go to court when that mysterious motorist who had run into Tally Clutton at the house was still unidentified? And did he exist? True, there was the evidence of the twisted bicycle wheel, the bruise on Tally's arm. Both could be easily fabricated, a deliberate fall, the ramming of the bicycle against a tree. The woman seemed honest and it was difficult to think of her as a ruthless murderer, particularly this murder; less difficult, perhaps, to imagine her as an accomplice. After all, she was over sixty; she obviously valued her job and the security of that cottage. It could be as important to her that the museum continued as it was to the two Dupaynes. The police knew nothing of her private life, her fears, her psychological needs, what resources she had to buttress herself against disaster. But if the mysterious motorist existed and was an innocent visitor, why hadn't he come forward? Or was she being naÏve? Why should he? Why subject yourself to a police interrogation, the exposure of your private life, the dragging into light of possible secrets, when you could keep quiet and remain undetected? Even if innocent, he would know that the police would treat him as a suspect, probably their prime suspect. And if the case remained unsolved, he would be seen as a possible murderer all his life.

This morning the museum was to open at ten o'clock for Conrad Ackroyd's four Canadian guests to be shown round. Dalgliesh had instructed her to be there with Benton-Smith. He had given no explanation but she remembered his words from a previous case: “With murder, always stay as close as you can to the suspects and the scene of the crime.” Even so, it was difficult to see what he hoped to gain. Dupayne hadn't died in the museum, and Vulcan, when he arrived last Friday, would have had no reason to enter the house. How, in fact, could he have done so without the keys? Both Miss Godby and Mrs. Clutton had been adamant that the museum door had been locked when they left. Vulcan would have concealed himself among the trees or in the garden shed, or—most likely of all—in the corner of the unlit garage, waiting, petrol in hand, for the sound of the door being pulled open and the dark figure of his victim to stretch out his hand to the light switch. The house itself was uncontaminated by horror but for the first time she was reluctant to return. Already it too was becoming tainted with the sour smell of failure.

By the time she was ready to leave, the day had hardly lightened but there was no rain except for a few heavy drops splodging the pavement. Rain must have fallen in the early hours as the roads were greasy, but it had brought no freshness to the air. Even when she had reached the higher ground of Hampstead and had opened the car windows there was little relief from the oppression of polluted air and a smothering cloud base. The lamps were still lit in the drive leading to the museum and when she turned the final corner she saw that every window blazed as if the place were preparing for a celebration. She glanced at her watch; five minutes to ten. The visiting group would be here already.

She parked as usual behind the laurel bushes, thinking again how convenient a shield it was for anyone wanting to park unseen. A row of cars was already neatly aligned. She recognized Muriel Godby's Fiesta and Caroline Dupayne's Mercedes. The other car was a people carrier. It must, she thought, have brought the Canadians. Perhaps they had hired it for their English tour. It was apparent that Benton-Smith had not yet arrived.

Despite the blaze of light, the door was locked and she had to ring. It was opened by Muriel Godby who greeted her with unsmiling formality which suggested that, although this particular visitor was neither distinguished nor welcome, it was prudent to show her proper respect. She said, “Mr. Ackroyd and his party have arrived and are having coffee in Mr. Calder-Hale's office. There's a cup for you, Inspector, if you want it.”

“Right, I'll go up. Sergeant Benton-Smith should be arriving soon. Ask him to join us, will you please?”

The door to Calder-Hale's office was shut but she could hear subdued voices. Knocking and entering, she saw two couples and Ackroyd seated on an assortment of chairs, most of them obviously brought in from one of the other rooms. Calder-Hale himself was perched on the side of his desk and Caroline Dupayne was seated in his swivel chair. They were all holding coffee cups. The men rose as Kate entered.

Ackroyd made the introductions. Professor Ballantyne and Mrs. Ballantyne, Professor McIntyre and Dr. McIntyre. All four were from universities in Toronto and were particularly interested in English social history between the wars. Ackroyd added, speaking directly to Kate, “I've explained about Dr. Dupayne's tragic death and that the museum is closed to the public at present while the police carry out an investigation. Well, shall we get started? That is, unless you'd like some coffee, Inspector.”

This casual reference to the tragedy was received without comment. Kate said she didn't need coffee; it had hardly been an invitation she was expected to accept. The four visitors seemed to take her presence for granted. If they were wondering why, as strangers to the museum, they needed to be accompanied by a senior police officer on what was after all a private visit, they were too well mannered to comment. Mrs. Ballantyne, pleasant-faced and elderly, seemed not to realize that Kate was a police officer and even asked her as they left the office whether she was a regular visitor to the museum.

Calder-Hale said, “I suggest that we start on the ground floor with the History Room, and then the Sports and Entertainment Gallery, before coming up to the gallery floor and the Murder Room. We'll leave the library to the last. I'll leave Conrad to describe the exhibits in the Murder Room. That's more in his line than mine.”

They were interrupted at this point by the sound of running feet on the stairs and Benton-Smith appeared. Kate introduced him somewhat perfunctorily and the little group set out on its tour. She was irritated by his belated arrival but, glancing at her watch, realized that she couldn't later complain. He had in fact arrived precisely on time.

They descended to the History Room. Here one wall with a range of display cabinets and shelves dealt with the main events of British history from November 1918 to July 1939. Opposite a similar collage showed what was happening in the wider world. The photographs were of remarkable quality and some, Kate guessed, were valuable and rare. The slowly moving group contemplated the arrival of world statesmen at the Peace Conference, the signing of the Versailles Treaty, the starvation and destitution of Germany compared with the celebrations of the victorious Allies. A procession of dethroned kings passed before them, their ordinary faces dignified—and sometimes made ridiculous—by lavishly decorated uniforms and ludicrous headgear. The new men of power favoured a more proletarian and utilitarian uniform; their jackboots were made to wade through blood. Many of the political pictures meant little to Kate, but she saw that Benton-Smith was engaging in an intense discussion with one of the Canadian professors about the significance for organized labour of the General Strike of May 1926. Then she remembered that Piers had told her that Benton-Smith had a degree in history. Well he would have. Sometimes Kate reflected wryly that she would soon be the only person under thirty-five without a degree. Perhaps that might in time confer its own prestige. The visitors seemed to take it for granted that she and Benton-Smith were as interested in the exhibits as were they and had as much right to express an opinion. Following them round, she told herself ironically that an investigation of murder was turning into something of a social occasion.

She followed the party into the gallery concerned with sports and entertainment. Here were the women tennis players in their bandeaux and encumbering long skirts, the men in their pressed white flannels; posters of hikers with their rucksacks and shorts, striding into an idealized English countryside; the Women's League of Health and Beauty in black satin knickers and white blouses, performing their mass rhythmic exercises. There were original railway posters of blue hills and yellow sands, bob-haired children flourishing buckets and spades, the parents in their discreet bathing costumes all apparently oblivious to the distant clangour of a Germany arming for war. And here, too, was the ever-present, unbridgeable gulf between the rich and the poor, the privileged and the underprivileged, emphasized by the clever grouping of the photographs, parents and friends at the 1928 Eton–Harrow cricket match compared with the bleak expressionless faces of ill-fed children photographed at their annual Sunday school outing.

And now they moved upstairs and into the Murder Room. Although the lights were already on, the darkness of the day had intensified and there was a disagreeable mustiness about the air. Caroline Dupayne, who had been an almost silent member of the party, spoke for the first time. “It smells stale in here. Can't we open a window, James? Let in some cold air on this stuffiness.”

Calder-Hale went to a window and, after a slight struggle, opened it about six inches at the top.

Ackroyd now took over. What an extraordinary little man he was, Kate thought, with his plump, carefully tailored body, restless with enthusiasm, his face as innocently excited as a child's above that ridiculous spotted bow-tie. AD had told the team about his first visit to the Dupayne. Always over-busy, he had given up valuable time to drive Ackroyd to the museum. She wondered, not for the first time, at the singularity of male friendship founded apparently on no bedrock of personality, no shared view of the world, based often on a single common interest or mutual experience, uncritical, undemonstrative, undemanding. What on earth did AD and Conrad Ackroyd have in common? But Ackroyd was clearly enjoying himself. Certainly his knowledge of the murder cases displayed was exceptional and he spoke without notes. He dealt at some length with the Wallace case and the visitors dutifully examined the notice from the Central Chess Club showing that Wallace was due to play on the evening before the murder, and gazed in respectful silence at Wallace's chess set displayed under glass.

Ackroyd said, “This iron bar in the display cabinet isn't the weapon; a weapon was never found. But a similar bar used to scrape ashes from beneath the grate was missing from the house. These two blown-up police photographs of the body taken within minutes of each other are interesting. In the first you can see Wallace's crumpled mackintosh, heavily bloodstained, tucked against the victim's right shoulder. In the second photograph it has been pulled away.”

Mrs. Ballantyne gazed at the photographs with a mixture of distaste and pity. Her husband and Professor McIntyre conferred together on the furniture and pictures in the cluttered sitting-room, that seldom-used sanctum of upper-working-class respectability which, as social historians, they obviously found more fascinating than blood and smashed brains.

Ackroyd concluded, “It was a unique case in three ways, the Court of Appeal quashed the verdict on the grounds that it was ‘unsafe having regard to the evidence,' in fact saying that the jury had been wrong. This must have been galling for Lord Chief Justice Hewart who heard the appeal and whose philosophy was that the British jury system was virtually infallible. Secondly, Wallace's trade union financed the appeal, but only after calling the people concerned to the London office and in effect holding a mini trial. Thirdly, it was the only case for which the Church of England authorized a special prayer that the Appeal Court should be guided to a right decision. It's rather a splendid prayer—the Church knew how to write liturgy in those days—and you can see it printed in the order of service in the display case. I particularly like that last sentence. ‘And you shall pray for the learned counsels of our Sovereign Lord the King, that they may be faithful to the Christian injunction of the apostle Paul. Judge nothing until God brings to light hidden things of darkness and makes manifest the counsels of the heart.' The Prosecuting Counsel, Edward Hemmerde, was furious about the prayer and probably more furious when it was effective.”