A murder in mayfair, p.12
A Murder in Mayfair, page 12
“She sounds like a very unlikable young woman.”
“Oh, she was—not on the surface, but not very far underneath. Clever and cunning. Whatever happened, the only thing that mattered to her was that she got what she wanted—whatever it was at the time. Other people were only there for her benefit and convenience. I say she was clever, but she wasn’t clever enough to hide the fact that she knew she was clever. Full of herself she was—and that’s like a cat too, isn’t it?”
“It is. And so is cunning.”
She nodded vigorously.
“That’s right. Lovely creatures—I always had one as soon as I was independent—but I never trusted them. I got Lucy’s measure as soon as she came. She went on and on about the research she was going to do—though she might have known that was of no interest to an ill-educated woman like myself. ‘Professor Marryott thinks I ought to look at Arcadian themes in Shakespearean comedy,’ she would say, or ‘Professor Frere thinks the Shakespeare Apocrypha is ripe for a new consideration.’ Such nonsense, talk like that to me! Anyway there was less of that sort of thing once the . . . bed arrangements changed.”
My eyebrows raised.
“I didn’t know it went as far as that. My mother always guessed they probably snatched opportunities when Lady John was busy with her social round.”
She hesitated, but eventually went on.
“Actually he’d moved out of the double bedroom and into the guest room even before Lucy Mariotti was given the nanny’s job. Things weren’t going well.”
“Obviously.”
“There was always a pretense made later on that the guest bed had been slept in, but we knew who was sleeping with whom. . . . It was a very tense household by the end.”
I shook my head wisely.
“It was surely asking for trouble to appoint a beautiful young girl on a live-in basis when they needed a new nanny.”
“I suppose it was, but it was only for a short time. She came in November, and she was intending to leave in June to travel round Europe.”
“Frankly, in sexual matters that is not a short time.”
Mrs. Gould shook herself. My words, I think, had been too explicit and too modern.
“I mustn’t keep you. I’ve taken up a lot of your time.”
“Not at all,” I said, pressing the bell to summon Mrs. Walden. “I’ve taken up an awful lot of yours.”
“I have an awful lot of time begging to be taken, up,” she said, but without bitterness. She stood by her choices.
“Do you think that Lord John is still alive?” I asked her, as I stood waiting.
“I haven’t the faintest idea, nor who might have helped him get away. It’s as much a mystery to me as to other people and the police. It’s what my later employers always asked, but I had no basis for an opinion, even if I’d cared to give them one. But I would have a guess on one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“If he’s still alive, the children will know. He loved them, and they loved him. If anyone in the house gave them time, it was Lord John. Once they grew up he will have made contact.”
“Even though he killed their mother?”
“Even though. I told you, it was only a guess. But the children felt nothing for their mother.”
“Well, you have had a long conversation!” said Mrs. Walden, bustling in and shepherding me into the corridor toward my next patient.
“Not about what we were supposed to be discussing,” I admitted. “She’s a very interesting woman. She did make clear what a very high opinion she has of the arrangements and the staff here.”
“We’re the family she never had,” said Mrs. Walden. “Mind you she’s no more lonely than some of those that did have family.”
To sum up: my impressions of Mrs. Gould after our long talk were that she is truthful, clearheaded, and disinterested. I would trust anything she said, because her memory seemed remarkable. Lack of personal and emotional involvements for herself have meant, I suspect, that her memories of other people’s lives are more vivid than most people’s would be. It’s possible that, in spite of her apparent frankness (granted that that frankness was often expressed in a roundabout way, part of the discretion that went with her job), there were some things concealed—I couldn’t make up my mind about this, but I think it’s possible. Whether this was from discretion, unwillingness to indulge in conjecture, or simply embarrassment about some subjects I wouldn’t like to guess.
Frieda Brewer
She had got far more out of her than I could have done, that was clear. Never in a million years, I was sure, would Mrs. Gould have talked in that unbuttoned way with a man. There were some interesting facts—the names of the academics, for example, and confirmation of the fact that the marriage was on the rocks even before Lucy arrived. But what was most valuable of all was that she had been the first to give me some idea of the atmosphere in the house, the feel and the mechanics of the household. And one could see that the arrival of Lucy served to light the fuse that slowly spluttered its way along to the dynamite. I was beginning to get the idea that Lucy was a young lady who relished blowups.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Followed
How does one get the eerie sensation of being watched? Followed? I suppose the followed bit is easy. But in my case I got that sensation after a day or two in which I had a much more amorphous feeling of uneasiness, which crystallized itself into the idea that eyes were on me. It’s difficult to explain that without recourse to the supernatural, but even at the time I tried to keep my feet on the ground, and resisted notions that would have the police at the Palace of Westminster grinning behind their hands. It is just possible that in a crowded street one registers a face, then registers it again, quite unconsciously of course, and eventually that eerie sensation starts building up. It’s not at all a pleasant feeling, and it takes you over.
And that’s the reason, I imagine, why I noticed the footsteps. I make a habit of getting out of the Ministry, either at lunchtime or for an hour or two at some point in the day. A minister who gets himself immersed in his meetings and his routine for the whole of the working day and beyond eventually gets swamped by it. Sometimes I go to Vitello d’Oro for a quick lunch of pasta or gnocchi, but mostly, if the weather is anything better than foul, I prefer to stay outside. Just the fresh air, the uncaring faces, the feeling of being part of a big city, an ant in an anthill, is healthy—psychologically speaking.
It was a Tuesday in early October, an unusually bright day for that time of year. I’d worked through lunch time because I’d had a long meeting during the morning with a delegation concerned about education for the blind. But while I’d worked I’d stolen glances out of the window. About two o’clock I decided to take my hour off. I left the Department, crossed Victoria Street, and made for St. James’s Park, pausing at the entrance to light a cigarette. That’s when I became conscious—or thought I became conscious—of footsteps behind me, stopping when I stopped. I was in no hurry to light my cigarette, thinking what I should do. When I did start walking again the footsteps also started up again behind me.
I had decided to find a seat with a good general view around the park. I walked some way in, watching the squirrels, unnaturally tame and skittish, until toward the lake I found a seat, facing the way I had come, that seemed ideal. Casually I wheeled round, sat down, and took a drag at my cigarette. Casual, be completely casual, I said to myself. So I cast my eye slowly, lazily, barely interestedly, at the people coming in my direction.
Tourists, office workers, young lovers, civil servants, clandestine hand-holders, businessmen discussing share options and takeover bids. All as expected. But one figure did catch my eye, cause me to focus more sharply. He had swerved aside from the tarmacked path as soon as he saw me sit down, and was now walking across the grass in the other direction. Clearly he did not want to pass me, did not want me to see his face.
I could make little from his back. Sports jacket, rather ill-fitting, perhaps shabby or just shoddy; gray flannel trousers, again not in first-rate condition, longish hair, uncut rather than styled. A meager haul of impressions. He walked, not turning, until he was several hundred yards away. Then he stopped under a tree, turning round slowly and pretending, like me a minute or two before, to survey the scene casually. His face was in the shade and I could not clearly discern any particular feature. A front view reinforced the impression the back view had given me of someone poorly dressed—not someone who didn’t care what he looked like, but somebody who wore cheap clothes because he was poor.
I finished my cigarette, and put my head back to drink in the sun. When I brought it back upright he was still there, fishing in his pocket. He brought out what I took to be a tube of sucky sweets, and put one in his mouth. I took out my packet in my turn, and lit another cigarette. I told people I was down to four a day, but not that day. I smoked, he sucked, neither of us looking directly at each other, but catching glimpses as we each nonchalantly surveyed the passing scene.
Eventually I decided to return to the Department. I took the same route I had come by through the little streets around St. James’s Underground station and across Victoria Street. This time I could not distinguish the footsteps behind me—there were no more people around to muffle his, so presumably he was keeping a greater distance between us. At the entrance to the Department I paused to have a word with Sam Baldry, the doorman. I contrived to turn back to face the street quite suddenly. I saw the calf of a gray-flanneled leg disappearing into a doorway.
I used my official car to get home that evening.
• • •
Frieda Brewer and I agreed on the phone that the only place we could discuss her report and the way forward from it was in one or other of our flats. Anywhere more public and we’d be continually looking over our shoulders for eavesdroppers. In the end we decided on mine. When she arrived she seemed to be concealing surprise at the humble nature of my flat and its location. She looked around the living room briskly, as if wanting to memorize its salient features for a paragraph in her book.
“You haven’t let being in the government go to your head,” she said. It could have been one of my more downright Yorkshire constituents speaking.
“Only the very top cabinet ministers get assigned fine homes for their exclusive use,” I explained dryly. “This one is very convenient for Westminster.”
“Of course. Still, I imagine as the sleaze factor shifts from the other side to your lot, expectations will rise and you’ll start moving upmarket.”
“You’re very cynical,” I said. “We are dedicated to stamping out sleaze. I’m certainly not planning to accept wodges of banknotes in brown envelopes.”
“I’m sure you’re not. Still, in politics the offers can come in forms a lot more subtle than that, especially as your lot is obviously intending to stay in power for yonks, barring accidents.” She sniffed. “Smells good.”
I was cooking a vaguely Arab dish of leg of lamb roasted at a fierce temperature on a bed of scalloped potatoes. I got her a gin and tonic and myself a beer, and we sat down with her report. She was much as I imagined her: a full figure, handsome if unsubtle face, in manner direct and exuding efficiency. If she’d been a singer she would have been a mezzo, singing roles such as Amneris and Eboli. I have to admit, though, that her no-nonsense manner put me off—not just from nonsense, but generally. I couldn’t quite work out whether this was a traditional male reaction, or simply a personal one.
“Anything strike you?” she asked. I looked at my notes.
“I was interested in what she said about Lord John, and how he would have made contact with the children if he was still alive. If so, Matthew Martindale put on a good performance.”
Frieda shrugged.
“That’s hardly surprising. He would have had immense practice in stonewalling curiosity about his father’s fate by now.”
I considered the general situation.
“I wonder if Mrs. Gould is right. Lord John could feel that he’s done enough harm to his children’s lives, and that the best thing he could do would be to keep away from them.”
“That could work the other way,” she said, her analytical mind working overtime. “He could want to make things up to them. Have you thought about the question of whether he is still alive—or let’s say whether he lived on after the murder?”
“A little. As a sort of side issue. This is not a quest to find my father, though. To me the lack of a body is crucial. We’re talking about suicide here, aren’t we? There’s no question of any revenge killing or any sort of melodramatic thing. Of course it’s possible to kill yourself so your body is never found, but why should he want to? On the contrary, if he decided to end it all, he’d want the thing known, cut and dried, so that his children could put him in the past and get on with their lives.”
“Maybe,” she said, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “If he survived, was it with the connivance of anyone?”
I shrugged. “Impossible to say. No doubt it would be easier with someone else’s help but all that talk there was in the tabloids about society pals closing ranks and making sure one of their number didn’t have to face the consequences seems to me so much balderdash. Lord John gives me the impression of rather a lonely figure, someone with few close friends. I did wonder about the Conservative Party—”
She frowned.
“How do you mean?”
“Spiriting him away to avoid embarrassment for themselves.”
“Isn’t that rather melodramatic?”
“Oh, I don’t mean it was done by them as a party. That’s never the way political parties do things. I mean Macmillan drawls a word or two to a colleague—‘Isn’t there someone who could get him out of the country? Get him a new identity?’—and hey, presto, someone has a word with someone, who has a word with someone else, and in a trice the job is done.”
“Possible,” she said, but she made it obvious she was skeptical. I could see she was a Conservative supporter. But what she said made sense. “How do you think it happened? Did Lord John ring Tory Party HQ the next day and say: ‘This is Lord John Revill here. Look, I’m frightfully sorry but I seem to have murdered my wife. Do you think there’s anyone who could get me out of the country to somewhere safe?’”
“No, of course not.”
“The truth is, there’s not been sight or sound—recorded sight or sound—of him since he left the house in Upper Brook Street. If he had help, he must have contacted someone. We don’t know who it was, or even who it was likely to be.”
“True. Anyway, it’s a side issue.” I went into the kitchen, carved the lamb into great chunks, served it on warm plates on top of the potatoes, and we sat down at the table. I opened a bottle of cheap red wine, which she looked at suspiciously, but we drank and ate companionably enough. “It was interesting to get the names of the professors,” I said, to get the discussion going again.
“Right.” She nodded. “I had one name, but not the other. Now, I’ve checked up on them both—”
“So have I,” I said. “So far as I can see from Who’s Who Marryott is dead and Frere is still alive.”
“That’s right. Which suits us nicely, because Marryott is the one Hasselbank has already talked to, while we never got on to Frere. I’ve rung Frere and checked, by the way, pretending to be a scholar wanting permission to quote him in a book. He is still alive, sounds hale and hearty, and lives in Sussex.”
“You’re a dab hand at a cover story, aren’t you?” I said admiringly. She raised her eyebrows.
“A lie, you mean. If I was working for a newspaper, or a politician in his official capacity, my ethical standards would be a notch or two higher. The fact is, this is so unofficial and personal that it . . . liberates me somewhat. I regard myself as working partly for myself.”
In a niggling way that last remark did not please me, but I brushed it aside.
“So I can go along and talk to Frere? Did you get any impression of him, beyond his being hale and hearty?”
“Not really. Straightforward, still very clear in his mind, so we’ll hope in his memory, too. By the way, I think honesty about your reasons for asking him about Lucy would be the best way, and the least dangerous for you.”
“Dangerous?”
“A government minister who goes around getting information out of people by telling lies is asking for trouble.”
“Hmmm. Fair enough, I suppose. What about Marryott? Did you talk to him seven years ago for the color supplement article, or did Hasselbank?”
“Elmore did the questioning, but I went along . . . I didn’t greatly like Marryott. Neither of us did. He talked only about Lucy’s academic ambitions, but there was something—I don’t know—sleazy about him. A leering, smirking kind of man, and one wondered whether a combination of that outlook on life and Lucy’s sexual go-getting might have been pretty poisonous, destructive.”
“I see. You’re wondering whether there might have been a more personal connection between the two, either before or after the murder.”
“Well, yes. But just wondering.”
“You know, one thing puzzles me from your report.”
“What’s that?”
“The Revill marriage was in a pretty rocky state, right?”
“Right.”
“And yet they engage as their nanny not one of the traditional dragons that the upper crust normally plump for, probably passing them on from one family to another, but a beautiful, sexy young Australian girl on the loose in Europe. I should have thought that anybody could have seen that was a recipe for disaster, and Lord John was no fool.”
Frieda Brewer paused in her eating.
“I get the impression that an upper-class marriage then—perhaps now, too—was very different from the average middleclass marriage today. Though heaven knows that’s hardly the dull, stable thing it once was. One reason why I’ll never, but never, think of getting married is the fact that it’s almost meaningless. Imagine going into it with the sort of dim hopes and expectations people have of it today! But I wonder with the Revill marriage being in such a poor state of repair whether they didn’t go into the engaging of Lucy Mariotti with their eyes open—deliberately, with an end in view.”
