Текст книги "An Expert in Murder"

Автор книги: Nicola Upson

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‘She was involved with one of his employees – a young man named Hedley White. I gather your husband thought a lot of him and was very upset at the news of Miss Simmons’s death.’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’m sorry – I can’t really help you there. He did talk fondly about Hedley – I remember because it’s an unusual name – and he was certainly a great believer in giving young people a chance, but I can’t be more specific than that.’

‘Had you noticed any change in his behaviour recently?’ Penrose asked, although he was rapidly coming to believe that Grace 166

Aubrey knew too little about her husband’s life to be able to throw much light on his death. ‘At the risk of being too straightforward, had he been unhappy?’

She smiled at him with a growing respect. ‘At the risk of being pedantic, I’d say angry rather than unhappy. He always had a short temper, but it was usually soon over. Lately, he often seemed worried or frustrated.’

‘Do you have any idea why?’

‘When Bernard was angry, it was usually because he couldn’t get his own way over something, but don’t ask me what.’

‘I know it’s unlikely, bearing in mind the manner of his death, but can you imagine anything that might have led Bernard to take his own life?’

‘No. Absolutely nothing. He had no great faith to prevent him from doing it, but after all he went through in the war and all the lives he saw snatched away before they were ever really begun, he scorned suicide as the coward’s way out. That was something he never was – a coward – and he despised it in other people. He had a bleak view of the world and he could be very hard on himself at times, usually because of things he hadn’t done that he thought he should have, but he always claimed that the greatest punishment for any sin was to go on living.’

Penrose wondered if the sin for which Bernard Aubrey had felt the need to repent went back as far as the war. He asked as much, and was rewarded once again with a look of approval.

‘What makes you think that, I wonder? You’re right, though.

Bernard had a terrible time, and he came back a very different man. Not broken, you understand, but with a combination of resentment and guilt which ran deeper than the grief we all felt to some extent.’ She lit another cigarette but lodged it almost immediately in the ashtray, where it burned steadily down, forgotten.

‘He’d been in the war in South Africa and distinguished himself there, so, although he was really too old to fight in France, they begged him to go over and lead the war underground. Lots of older men did the same – they needed the youngsters to do all the digging, but they only had a week’s basic training or something 167

ridiculous before they were sent out to that God-forsaken landscape and then expected to do battle with earth and water and charges going off all over the place. People like Bernard, who were experienced and could lead by example, were worth their weight in gold. I know that there was no such thing as an easy war for anyone – you look the right age to vouch for that – but it always seemed to me that tunnelling was a different level of hell. There’s something peculiarly unnatural about never seeing daylight. But he was marvellous with those boys, at least at first; he looked after them, taught them how to keep their nerve and anticipate the enemy’s next move, and believe me – there was nobody better than my husband at doing that. And they learned quickly – they had to; the slightest noise down there could cost lives and if you gave way to panic, that was it – you lost the confidence of your colleagues and your usefulness was over.’

‘And is that what happened to Bernard?’

‘No, not at all, although I don’t know how he kept it together.

He had to spend hours alone in cramped positions, straining every sinew to hear enemy noise. Apparently, sound travels further through solid ground and water than it does through air and it was his job to interpret what he heard, to plot the direction of the tunnels and judge the distances for the charges. There must have been enormous pressure on him, psychologically I mean, knowing how much depended on his decisions and how close he was to the enemy. It would have been easy to let your imagination run away with you in a situation like that.’

Penrose waited, not wanting to hurry her. When she didn’t speak for some time, he said, ‘It’s not surprising that he developed claustrophobia. Surely nobody could leave that behind and come away unscathed?’

‘I don’t know. He was a strong man, in some ways incredibly so, and I think he’d have been fine if it hadn’t been for one particular incident. It was in the spring of 1916 – some of the tunnels ran a third of a mile or so under enemy territory by then, so you can imagine how important the ventilation was. They’d judge it by a candle – forgive me if I’m telling you things you already know –

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and if it stayed alight, even if it was only the feeblest of blue flames, it was judged safe to work. With the longest tunnels, there’d be an infantryman above ground working those big blacksmith’s bellows, pumping air to the face along lines of stove piping. It was real teamwork, and a huge act of faith for the men underground.’

She got up and poured herself a whisky and soda from a decanter next to the flowers, then picked up a second glass and looked at him questioningly. He shook his head, reluctant to accept anything that would make him more tired than he was already, and she resumed her story. ‘One day, Bernard was down there with two others, young engineers who were placing charges according to his instructions. They’d nearly finished when they noticed that the air was beginning to deteriorate and it was getting harder to breathe. Obviously they couldn’t just call up to see what was happening with the bellows – it was too far and anyway, only sign language was permitted below ground – so Bernard ordered them back up immediately. Fortunately, because their senses were so attuned to the slightest change, they’d noticed in time to make it back to safety, but one of them refused to go.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’d nearly finished laying the charge and was determined to get it done. Bernard knew the boy had misjudged how long he could stay down there safely and he tried to drag him away, but he wasn’t strong enough to do it on his own – the third man had followed orders immediately and left – and he knew it would be dangerous to make a noise by struggling because it would alert the enemy to their position. He had no choice but to go back and get the bellows working again, and try to save him that way. When he reached the surface, he found his colleague and a few other soldiers wrestling with the piping; apparently the infantryman had been working the bellows constantly, so they realised there must be a blockage somewhere in the system. Of course, Bernard knew there wasn’t a chance in hell of locating it before the man below suffocated, so he turned and went back down.’

Penrose was silent, trying to imagine the courage it must have 169

taken for anyone to respond like that, to descend to what must have seemed like certain death. The mental picture of Aubrey’s contorted face and outstretched hand, already fixed distressingly in his mind, took on a new horror.

‘Needless to say, it was hopeless. The air in the tunnel was all but extinguished and Bernard only got a hundred yards or so in before he was gasping for breath and losing consciousness. He was on his knees, still trying to move forward, when the man he’d sent back caught up with him and dragged him out. It’s a miracle that either of them got out alive.’

‘And the boy?’ Penrose asked, although he knew there could only be one outcome.

‘When they got the air circulating again, they found him about a hundred yards from the face, obviously on his way back. What a terrible death it must have been – all that blackness and nothing to breathe, and the sheer terror of being down there alone and knowing you’re doomed. He was face down, Bernard said, with his mouth full of soil. They may as well have buried him alive.’ She shuddered, and added with a wry bitterness, ‘The charge was perfectly laid, however. They used it that evening and I gather it was rather successful.’

‘It’s impossible for anyone who wasn’t there to understand how that must have affected him and I’m sorry if this sounds naive –

but I don’t quite see why he felt that to be a sin for which he had to be punished. Guilty for not being able to help, perhaps – but not responsible. It was an accident, surely? What more could he have done?’

‘Yes, it was an accident, but the boy who died wasn’t just anyone: he was Bernard’s nephew, Arthur, his sister’s only child, and Bernard had made a promise to look after him. That in itself is ridiculous, of course – you can’t make promises in war, it doesn’t work that way – but he made it all the same and never forgave himself for being unable to keep it, even though his sister certainly never laid the blame at his door.’

For Penrose, a piece of the jigsaw fell at last into place. He had no idea how it got him any closer to finding Aubrey’s killer, but 170

somehow he knew it was important. ‘Do you happen to have a photograph of her?’ he asked.

‘Of Nora? Yes, of course. I’ve got one of her with Arthur, taken not long before his death. Do you want to see it?’

‘Yes please, if you don’t mind.’ She was gone only a couple of minutes and, when she returned, handed him a small photograph in a plain gold frame. The boy in the picture was, he guessed, little more than twenty, and he smiled broadly out from behind the glass, handsome in his new uniform and with a warmth in his eyes which would have made him attractive even if the rest of his features had been less appealing. He had his arm round his mother, who looked up at him proudly but with an apprehension which had been justified all too soon. Her face was in profile and she was older here than when Penrose had last seen her, but it was unmistakably the same woman whose picture looked down from the bookshelf in Aubrey’s office, the woman to whom he imagined the bayonet and flower had been pointing. Without really knowing why, he asked: ‘The irises – here and in Bernard’s office – are they connected at all to his sister?’

She looked at him, completely taken aback. ‘I suppose in a way they are, although how you know so much about my husband puzzles me.’

It puzzled Penrose, too, although he had no intention of discussing the scenes – and they were, he realised now, very much like theatrical scenes – which had been created for him both on the train and in Aubrey’s office. In truth, almost everything he knew about Aubrey was based on what the killer had told him, so who else, he wondered, was so familiar with the man’s past?

Too polite to question him more, Grace Aubrey continued with her explanation. ‘Actually, the irises are more linked with Arthur.

He was a brilliant young man, you know. When he enlisted, he was two years into an engineering degree at Cambridge, but what he loved most was gardening and he spent virtually all his time in the Botanic Gardens. It was always his intention to go back there after the war. There was a job waiting for him as soon as he graduated.’

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Penrose remembered the Gardens; he’d visited them once or twice himself during his university days and, although they lay just on the edge of the town, within easy walking distance of his col-lege, their contrasting landscapes offered a seductive other world.

He and Aubrey’s nephew must have been in Cambridge at the same time, he realised.

‘Arthur got his love of flowers from his mother, although she was a botanical illustrator, not a gardener. He transformed their own garden when he was still just a boy, and their neighbours’, then he earned money doing it in his spare time at university. The iris was his favourite flower. After he died, when Bernard came back from the war, he had twenty-one different varieties planted here in the garden, one for each year of Arthur’s life. Part of the penance, I think, although he hardly needed flowers to remind him.’ She stood, and walked over to the vase below the painting.

‘Bernard chose the species to have flowers all year round, so it’s just as well I’ve grown to love them too. See how beautiful they are when you look at them closely.’

He joined her and saw what she meant. The flowers which he had believed to be of a uniform deep lilac with a single splash of yellow were, in fact, a complex blend of tones and colours, each slightly different to the next. ‘Did you know it’s supposed to be the flower of chivalry?’ she asked. ‘Three petals – one for faith, one for wisdom, and one for valour. Bernard laid an iris on the Cenotaph for Arthur every week, almost without fail. I shall do the same now for both of them – there’s no one else left to remember. Nora died five years ago – she had cancer – and Arthur’s father was already long dead when he went to France.’

‘Did Arthur have a lover?’

‘Not that I know of. Certainly there was no girlfriend at the memorial service we held for him.’

Having believed at first that he would get nothing from Grace Aubrey, Penrose now sensed that the time spent with her had hinted at everything of significance in the case. At a loss for the moment as to how it related back to the theatre and to Elspeth Simmons, he fell back on a more conventional line of enquiry.

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‘Can I have the name of your husband’s solicitor, Mrs Aubrey? I’ll need to see the details of his will.’

‘It’s John Maudelyn at Maudelyn & De Vere. They’re in Lan-caster Place, but I think I can save you some time. If there was one thing that Bernard and I did discuss, it was our financial affairs.’

She left the room, again only briefly. ‘This is a copy of his will,’ she said, handing Penrose a large ivory-coloured envelope. ‘You’ll want to check with John, but you certainly won’t find him at work on a Sunday so this might help in the meantime. I’d be very surprised if he’d changed it without telling me, and there are none of those startling revelations in here that make things so much easier for detective writers.’ She smiled wryly. ‘And theatre producers, for that matter. Put simply, the houses, Bernard’s stocks and shares and a significant amount of capital go to Joseph and to me; neither of us will ever want for anything, as you’ll see.’

‘And the theatres?’

‘Ownership of the bricks and mortar goes to Joseph, but no executive powers in their management. That falls to John Terry, together with a sizeable share of the profits. Or, I suppose, the losses, although he’d have to be very stupid to whittle away assets of the scale that Bernard has built up over the years. A lump sum has been left to Lydia Beaumont; they were good friends, and he could always fancy himself a little in love with her without the fear of having to do anything about it – I’m sure you know what I mean. The most unusual clause concerns Hedley White – I knew I’d seen the name somewhere. He is to have a job – and a well-paid one – at the New and Wyndham’s theatres for as long as he wants one or, should he choose to leave, he will receive a sum of money that should set him up for life.’

Penrose thanked her and held out his hand, ready to leave her in peace, but she walked with him down to the hallway, stopping at the door to another room on the way to point out a second vase of flowers. ‘These don’t strictly belong to the iris family but I liked them so much that Bernard planted them for me. Ironic, isn’t it?’

He looked at the velvety brown and green flowers without understanding her meaning. ‘ Hermodactylus tuberosus, Inspector. Or, to 173

you and me, the widow iris.’ At the door, she offered her hand again and looked gravely up at him. ‘Will I be able to see Bernard’s body soon? We may not have been in love, but we did always respect each other and the more I see of the world, the rarer I consider that to be. I don’t intend to stop now simply because he’s dead.’

‘Of course. I’ll have a car sent for you in the morning. Would midday suit?’ She nodded, and Penrose paused at the door. ‘I spoke to Bernard very briefly tonight – I wanted to ask him about Hedley White and Elspeth Simmons – and he said there was something he needed to see me about, too. I don’t suppose you have any idea what that might have been?’

She shook her head. ‘I can’t imagine why he would need to talk to the police but I can easily understand why, if he did, he would choose you. Thank you for your courtesy, Inspector, and for your intelligence. I appreciate them both, and I’d be grateful if you could do one thing for me. When you find whoever did this, as I’ve every confidence you will, I’d like you to make sure that they know what they’ve done. I don’t mean bring them to justice in the courts

– that will happen, of course, but I have no faith in capital punishment. Death means different things to different people, and I think Bernard was right when he said it could often be the easy way out.

But before they die, I’d like you to try to make sure they understand what they’ve taken from this world. He was a good man.’

Penrose knew it wasn’t his place to question what Grace Aubrey had said about the relationship she shared with her husband, but he couldn’t help reflecting that there were many kinds of love. As he left, he could not decide for whom he felt the greater sadness: the man who had died so full of regret; or the woman left alone to deal with a grief which she had sincerely never expected to know.

A walk through London in the early hours of the morning would not have been Josephine’s preferred way of dealing with the shock of Aubrey’s murder, but she found herself with very little choice.

Archie’s departure had been followed by an uncomfortable interlude in the Green Room, during which Marta’s anger had dis-174

solved into frustration tinged with embarrassment, and things were only made worse when Lydia snapped at her to calm down and stop wrapping her in cotton wool. Josephine’s gentle suggestion that they all go home and get some rest met with adamant refusal.

‘No, you two go home if you want to,’ Lydia said, getting up suddenly, ‘but after what I’ve seen tonight I intend to put off rest for as long as I can – particularly the eternal sort. I need to see a bit of life, so I’m going for a walk. You’re welcome to join me, or I’ll see you later.’

Marta started to protest but thought better of it and gave Josephine a look which begged for solidarity, so they left together, accepting a police chaperone as far as Number 66 and then, as soon as the constable’s back was turned, setting off in the other direction. God help him if any harm came to them, Josephine thought: Archie’s fury would be merciless.

The night was cold and damp, but the rain seemed to have cleared permanently now and the air was not unpleasant. All signs of Saturday’s revelry were long gone and, as they skirted Covent Garden and crossed the Strand to head down Villiers Street towards the river, there was barely a soul to be seen. It was a little after 3 a.m. and ordinary people – those whose evening had not been interrupted by death – had gone home to bed long ago, leaving London in the care of a very different populace. The coffee stalls – which appeared out of nowhere as the public houses closed, taking up their nocturnal pitches at the foot of bridges and on street corners – were in full swing, a magnet to the sleepless, the lonely, and the fugitive; to anyone, in other words, who could be regarded as a poor relation of the city’s daylight hours. Josephine and her friends crossed Victoria Embankment and made for the stall that was tucked against the steps to Hungerford Bridge. The soft yellow glow of its interior was a welcome distraction from the unrelenting blackness of the river, and the pungent aroma of sausages and coffee did its best to be inviting, but Josephine doubted that the affirmation of life which Lydia craved was to be found among its clientele.

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‘Never let it be said I don’t know how to show a girl a good time,’ Lydia insisted with a flash of her old humour and walked undaunted to the counter, where a man and a woman stared out into the street as if from a box at the theatre. As the woman pushed three mugs of hot liquid towards Lydia, her wedding ring

– sunk almost without trace into the middle-aged plumpness of her fingers – seemed a revealing expression of the extent to which she had given up on life.

They sat down on one of the benches that lined the Embankment, and Lydia was the first to speak. ‘It’s funny, you know, now I think about it – although it was such a shock to find Bernie tonight, I couldn’t honestly say it’s a surprise that he ended up like that.’

Josephine was intrigued. ‘Why do you say that? I know theatre can be harsh but violent death seems to me a little excessive.’

Lydia was quiet for a moment, trying to put her finger on why she felt the way she did. ‘This may sound melodramatic, but he always seemed to live in a darker world than the rest of us – something more sinister than the sad old muddle that most of us will admit to. I remember we got drunk one night during a particularly awful run of the Dream. It was Christmas Eve and his wife had gone to visit their son in Cirencester, and Bernie didn’t fancy seeing Christmas in on his own so we sat in his office and got smashed on his finest malts.’ She drained her mug, staring out across the river. ‘It’s not the most cheerful of drinks at the best of times,’ she continued, ‘and it was getting close to the anniversary of my brother’s death, so we soon got to talking about the war. It surprised me, his attitude towards it all.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well, I’d always thought of him as quite a peaceable man, a reluctant soldier if you like, but he was adamant that war was a natural instinct. I can still hear him saying it, in that great booming voice he had when what he was saying came from the heart – that the trenches appealed to those murderous instincts which slum-bered close to the surface, and the war had simply smashed this flimsy armour of culture that we all thought was so strong. Up until then, I thought that war was the interlude for him as for all of us –

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tragic, unforgettable, but something to leave behind. That night, I realised he carried it with him all the time. All the colour and the joy and the make-believe that he made so real for the rest of us – it had never convinced Bernie.’

Privately, Josephine wasn’t sure how many people it had convinced. Lydia lived her roles wholeheartedly – it was one of the great joys of watching her on stage – but she would be the first to admit that she sometimes found it reassuring to continue the performance in her daily life. Like Aubrey, Josephine found it difficult to ignore the contradictions between her personal sense of justice and the single-mindedness which war demanded: one day, if an Englishman killed a German he was hanged; the next he was a patriot, and she remembered how upset she had been to see her friends and neighbours, even her family, scanning the papers for news of enemy slaughter with hopeful eyes, driven by fear for those they loved. She was not yet twenty at the time but, as the years passed, she realised that her revulsion had nothing to do with age: now, with talk of Nazi rallies and worries over Britain’s air power, another storm was gathering and, at thirty-seven, her anxiety for people on both sides was as complex as ever. If war broke out again, she knew there would be some difficult years ahead for people who felt as she did.

‘I can understand what Bernard meant,’ she said. ‘Jack was in London at the time of the declaration, and he wrote to me about it. Jack was my lover,’ she explained, realising there was no reason why Marta should know anything about her personal history. ‘He was killed at the Somme. But he said the crowds in the city as war broke out were really quite terrifying: when the population was united like that in a mob, all the instincts of hatred and prejudice were given a free rein and nobody questioned them. It was as if everyone had reverted to an innate violence, with all reason and mercy just swept away.’

‘I didn’t know you’d lost someone,’ Marta said.

‘Haven’t we all?’ Josephine retorted quickly, then remembered she was talking to a friend and put away the curt matter-of-factness which she habitually used to deflect sympathy. ‘He was medically 177

trained, and shot in the back trying to help another soldier – an English one, although I’m sure he would have done the same if he’d come across a German alone and needing help. He found it very hard to reconcile his pacifism with the role he was given. It was one of the things I loved about him. In fact, I based a lot of Richard’s character on Jack.’ She smiled, remembering Marta’s earlier comments about Queen of Scots. ‘And of course I didlove him, which is perhaps why people are so convinced by Richard.’ Marta took the dig good-naturedly, and Josephine turned back to Lydia. ‘I don’t see why a dark heart makes Bernard a candidate for murder, though.’

‘It’s not just that, it’s something much more personal he told me that night.’ She didn’t go on straight away, but now it was not her sense of timing in front of an audience that made her hesitate. ‘He made me promise never to mention this to anyone, but I don’t suppose it matters now. His nephew died in an accident halfway through the war, but Bernard was convinced he was murdered, and that one of his colleagues had killed him out of spite.’

‘But why?’ Josephine asked, horrified.

‘He didn’t say anything more. It was a secret he’d carried with him all that time and I think he regretted telling me almost as soon as he’d opened his mouth. But Bernard was there when it happened, so he must have had his reasons for suspecting foul play.’

‘Why didn’t he just go to the authorities?’ Josephine asked, highly sceptical. ‘Even in war, there are laws and systems of redress.’

‘I got the impression that he had no proof – either that or he wanted to deal with it himself.’

‘You should have told Archie this earlier, you know. If Bernard Aubrey was going around swearing revenge for a twenty-year-old murder, I’m not surprised someone wanted him silenced.’

‘It really wasn’t like that. Bernard knew how to keep his mouth shut.’

‘How can you be so sure? He’s dead, Lydia, and there’s no point in protecting him now. If you don’t want to tell Archie, I will – but either way, he has to know.’

‘OK, OK, but there are different ways of making amends, you 178

know. I’m not sure that Bernard intended revenge. I think one of the reasons he was so soft on Hedley was as a way of making up for what happened to his nephew. Hedley’s about the same age, and I think Bernard wanted to give him a start in life, to look after him.’

Perhaps, Josephine thought, remembering how devastated Aubrey had been in the foyer earlier that evening when she had explained that it was Hedley’s girlfriend who had been killed; had that really been simply sympathy for a young friend’s grief, or was there more to it? She wondered if Archie had made any progress in finding a connection between the two murders. Was there anything she could think of in what Elspeth had told her which might link her to Aubrey, or to what had supposedly happened to his nephew? Or something that might give Hedley White a reason to resent them both?

‘I wonder where Hedley is?’ Lydia said, as if reading her thoughts. ‘He must be shattered by what’s happened, and I don’t expect he even knows about Bernie yet. That’s what I really meant about Bernie’s death not being a surprise; you don’t expect people like Hedley’s girl to be killed, not with all that youth and innocence

– why would anyone want to? But Bernie was different – you always got the feeling that he understood violence, even if he didn’t have it in him.’

‘I have to say, I wouldn’t have wanted him as an enemy,’

Josephine admitted. ‘Without his support, I think I would have found Elliott Vintner’s accusations much harder to deal with. He propped me up through that trial with his loyalty and his determination – and that was professional, not personal. I can imagine how ruthless he could be if something really mattered to him, if it were a question of life and death.’

Marta, not having known Aubrey, had taken little part in the conversation but she seemed glad now to have the chance to speak about something other than murder. ‘That must have been a difficult time for you – after all that success, to be accused of stealing someone else’s story. I remember reading The White Heartages ago – I worked in a hospital for a bit after the war and one of the patients asked for it to be read aloud to him. I liked it, but I 179

remember being so disappointed by the books Vintner wrote later; perhaps I’d just moved on.’

‘No, you’re right, it was something special and I never questioned its merits – only my reliance on them. But he couldn’t repeat the success of that first novel, no matter how hard he tried – the rest were all failures.’

‘So he thought he’d get the money from you instead?’

‘Yes, and he might have succeeded if it hadn’t been for Bernard, an expensive lawyer and a judge who said that if any dues were to be paid, Vintner should first settle his account with Shakespeare.

Of course, it turned out that the judge had seen the play five times and was a huge fan. I imagine Bernard treated him to a sixth performance on the house after that.’

‘You certainly couldn’t fault Bernie’s generosity,’ Lydia agreed.

‘Did you know he’s given all the money he made from Richard of Bordeauxto the families of those who died in the war?’

‘What, you mean he hasn’t made a penny out of it himself?’

Marta asked, astonished.

‘Not one. He said its pacifism was what struck a chord and he wanted to honour that. He really was a remarkable man. I owe my career to him. So does Josephine, in a way. I only wish I could have thanked him.’

‘The best way to do that now is to help Archie catch his killer,’