The Cold Light of Dawn

by Graham Ison

  ‘You see, Mr Mallory, Mrs Lambert did not drown — she was murdered. Probably by someone seizing her ankles while she was taking a bath. One of the mistakes that George Joseph Smith made, way back in nineteen-fifteen, was to assume that death in those cases is caused by drowning. It’s not. It’s what those clever pathologists call vagal inhibition. To laymen — like you and me — the best way of describing it is shock — a paralysis of the central nervous system.’ He paused for effect. ‘It was you who seized her ankles, Mr Mallory, so sharply that her head went under the water immediately, and the water went straight up her nostrils and she was dead. You then dragged her out of the bath, attired her in the bottom half of her bikini — nice touch that; local colour I suppose you’d call it — and put her body in the car and drove it to Le Roc Dent. Then you pitched her over thinking she’d be lost forever.

  ‘Unfortunately, the tides are such that she fetched up practically on the doorstep of the very house you had killed her in. The gendarmerie could have told you that would happen. Well they could now — they’ve done a lot of work on it.’

  Mallory looked stunned; his face ashen.

  But Tipper refused to relent — gave him no time to collect his thoughts. ‘Mr John Wallace who, you will recall, was arrested a few days ago under the Official Secrets Act, has been extremely helpful to us.’ Tipper tapped the envelope containing the photographs that had been taken from Mallory’s safe earlier that evening. ‘And he admits to having taken these. That’s why we knew what we were looking for. He took them on the seventeenth of June and obligingly recorded the fact in his diary. So, incidentally, did she. He gave her a set of the prints, but he kept the negatives. You obviously didn’t know at the time that they were being taken — you were busy; very busy. But you soon found out when Mrs Lambert started putting the pressure on — and gave you a set of the prints. But she was under pressure too. The video tape we seized from your house — and you’re obviously familiar with the contents — was recorded on Eva van Heem’s instructions, by a South African agent called Webster. But there was another tape — of Penny and van Heem. That tape had been used by van Heem to blackmail Penny. There was ample evidence that Penny was bi-sexual, and she had had a lesbian relationship of a permanent nature, but it was probably not known at the Foreign Office — in fact, almost certainly not; it would have prejudiced her positive vetting. And that was the lever that Eva van Heem used. Eva, however, from what we hear, was pure lesbian, so your suggestion that you had had an affair with her is, to say the least, suspect. But all she wanted was to marry you, wasn’t it?’ He gave Mallory no time to answer. ‘Her mistake was to give the negatives to John Wallace to take care of — or rather — to leave them with him. She never actually had them. But you knew what John Wallace was doing for Eva van Heem I’ve got to give you credit for that, turning the tables on a professional, and getting her to give you information. So you leaned on Wallace and got him to hand over the negatives. But there was one little doubt, wasn’t there? There might just have been a set of these photographs still in Penny’s flat — and you had to make sure. But you had no idea where the original of the tape was. That was your first call on your return, wasn’t it?’ Tipper paused. ‘You see, we never found her house keys — not in her luggage, and obviously not on the body.’

  ‘You can’t prove any of it,’ said Mallory, his voice rising in pitch.

  Tipper knew differently. ‘But apart from all that, Mr Mallory, you said just now that you awoke from your doze at about eight o’clock the following morning — the morning after Mrs Lambert’s disappearance — apparently while swimming.’

  Mallory nodded.

  ‘Unfortunately, Mr Mallory, her body was found about two hours before that, in the cold light of dawn. And you were already on the ferry — in fact, were very close by then to Portsmouth, having quite deliberately left the night before, immediately after disposing of her body. You didn’t go out to look the next morning. You couldn’t have done — you weren’t there, and you knew there’d be no point.’

  Mallory went to say something, but Tipper held up his hand and went on.

  ‘You admit having left her luggage on the ferry that docked about one hour after the discovery of her body, and about one hour before you supposedly woke up and went to look for her. You would have seen the activity — the gendarmerie, the photographers, wouldn’t you? And they would possibly have seen you?’ That was a guess. ‘Incidentally, that luggage contained Mrs Lambert’s beach robe, the one you said she was wearing when you last saw her — or had you forgotten?’

  Mallory stared at the detective, his face grey. The lines around his mouth were deep-etched and he suddenly looked older than his years — much older. For a moment he said nothing. The drive had gone. The ingenuity of his training had dissipated. The twisting and turning upon which he had seemed, at times, to thrive, was now exhausted. At long last Tipper saw before him a broken man.

  At length Mallory spoke. ‘The very first day she became my secretary I knew that I had to have her. She was provocative. She wore clothes that were designed to be attractive — sexually, I mean. I tried to stop her — to stop the inevitable. I remember she started wearing a leather skirt, very thin and very tight. I told her she shouldn’t come to work in it, that it wasn’t quite the thing for the Foreign Office. She pouted at me and said that it was, after all, a skirt — it was not as if she had come in trousers. She knew there was a rule about trousers.

  ‘She knew all about me — these girls gossip with each other, you know. She knew that I was going off to another ambassador’s post somewhere, and she must have known I was about due for a K, too. But the mistake I made, the first serious mistake, was to take her with me to Brussels. It was a conference — one of those endless EEC things. A lot of people take their secretaries — quite properly of course. There’s nothing underhand about it, and my wife knew. And the Office allows for it — expenses, I mean. It was that first night that she did for me — in a sense. She’d been making the running all along, but that night she clinched it. She just walked into my room, undressed, and got into bed with me. She never spoke a word.’

  ‘You could have thrown her out — there and then, surely? Sent her straight back to London?’

  Mallory looked unbelievingly at Tipper. ‘What would that have achieved? They might have believed it — back here, but there would have been a few who wouldn’t. And what about her? Think of the wild allegations she could have made — victim of a senior official’s lust — attempted rape! She’d refused my advances, so I sent her home, trying to make it look as though it was the other way round. She’d have had great fun with that.

  ‘It was all too easy. After that it became a regular thing. Hampton Wick was too awkward, and I persuaded her to move in a bit. Eventually we found this place at Wimbledon and I helped her with the expenses, because she was always short of money.’

  Tipper smiled, thinking of the four thousand pounds she had had in her bank account.

  ‘But then she started threatening. She wanted me to leave Francesca and marry her. She actually said that she would like to be an ambassador’s wife — to be Lady Mallory. It started to get obvious. She would call me “darling” at the Office — only when the two of us were there, but it was a hint that she could and would do it anytime she felt like it. And she said that she would tell people. She even threatened to ring up Francesca and tell her. I didn’t know what the hell to do. You can’t sack people in the Foreign Office — well not like you can in industry. I thought about getting her transferred to another department, but I knew that that would be no good either — and I think she guessed. She said that if I had her moved she would blow the whistle on me.’ He frowned, an expression of distaste on his face. ‘That was the actual expression she used: blow the whistle.’

  Mallory leaned forward on the table resting on his folded arms. ‘It was marriage she wanted, and she drove me so hard that I even considered it at one stage. But it would have been a messy divo
rce. Francesca’s not the sort of woman you walk out on. She’d have dumped me without a thought, of that I’m quite sure, but she’d never have stood for me leaving her. And she’s got friends in high places. She could have ruined me, utterly. I tried to explain all this to Penny but she thought I was making excuses. She wasn’t awfully bright, I’m afraid.’

  Mallory leaned back in his chair and suddenly smiled; it was uncharacteristic — ghoulish almost. ‘Then Eva van Heem sent for me, and told me that she knew all about the affair and gave me a copy of the tape of Penny and me. The same day, a coincidence I think, Penny brought a set of the photographs to work with her. She put them in an envelope, walked into my office and just handed them to me without a word. I knew I was done for. I worked out how I could kill her without leaving a trace — or so I thought!’

  Tipper nodded. ‘Is there anything else you wish to say, Mr Mallory?’

  ‘I should like to send for my solicitor,’ he said quietly.

  *

  The French authorities surrendered their right to extradite Robert Mallory, even though a murder committed on the sovereign soil of France is usually tried there. But this was the murder of an Englishwoman by an Englishman, her lover, and both were domiciled in England. English law caters for it adequately. A British subject may be tried at the Old Bailey for a crime committed anywhere in the world — and so he was. Which was a pity really. In France Mallory would probably have escaped lightly because of the lenient view the French take of what they quaintly term ‘crime passionnel’.

  *

  Three months later, Robert Mallory, whom ironically the other prisoners called ‘Sir’ Robert — even though his Sovereign never did — was found hanged in his cell in the lifers’ block at Parkhurst. One of the first inmates of the prison to hear of it was John Wallace, serving fourteen years for espionage.

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