by C. P. Snow
As he lay dozing, there was a tap, a couple of impatient taps, on the bedroom door. The door opened – ‘Mr Humphrey! Mr Humphrey!’
His housekeeper, Mrs Burbridge, was standing beside the bed. She was a woman in her early seventies, blooming, healthy, as a rule unfussed. But she was not unfussed that morning.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Humphrey. It’s the foreign girl, Lady Ashbrook’s daily. I can’t make her out much. She’s asking for you. I’m afraid something’s happened to her ladyship.’
‘What has happened?’ Humphrey had come full awake.
‘I’m afraid she’s dead.’
Mrs Burbridge couldn’t tell him more. She found Maria incomprehensible, except that she was asking for Humphrey and seemed to want him to return with her to Lady Ashbrook’s house. Humphrey said that he would soon be ready, and shortly followed Mrs Burbridge downstairs.
Maria was standing in the hall, Mrs Burbridge with an arm around her shoulders. Maria was a sturdy young woman, not given to excitement. She wasn’t crying, but her face opened when she saw him and she broke into a stream of her own language. It is horrible, he thought she was saying, and then lost the rest. He had to tell her to speak slowly: he didn’t really understand Portuguese, but he would have to try.
‘She has been killed,’ said Maria, and crossed herself. Those words were clear, but Humphrey couldn’t believe it. A stroke he had been expecting, any sort of sudden death. Not this.
He questioned Maria, incredulously. How did she know the old lady had been killed? Was she certain? ‘You will see,’ Maria replied phlegmatically. ‘It is horrible. Her head. Her head.’
By this time, Humphrey had to believe. Suddenly, as with other violent happenings, it became certain, almost banal, like a piece of news, obviously true, which he had heard a long time before.
When did Maria discover this? Humphrey looked at his watch: it was nearly eight o’clock. Maria had gone into the drawing-room, to do the morning cleaning. There she was. You will see, Maria told Humphrey again. She had tried to telephone the police. She had got through to the station, but wasn’t sure that she had made them understand. Her English was so bad, she apologised. So she had come to Humphrey. She apologised again for giving so much trouble, but she had to find someone to talk to.
She had good nerves, Humphrey thought. Within minutes, after they had walked up the Square, they entered Lady Ashbrook’s drawing-room. Outside the house, the young woman had touched his sleeve and said that he must be prepared. It was a bad spectacle.
Inside the room, obliterating all else, was a smell that one didn’t forget. It wasn’t strong. It was sweet and light. If it had been another smell or, rather, a smell from another cause it would have been dominant, maybe, scarcely noticeable. If it had had another cause, it might not even have been nauseous. There were pleasant smells, just as sweet, just as corrupt.
Affected by the smell, his first sight of the room was blurred. There was a curtain drawn back, the light was bright, but for an instant his eyes were jarred. Chairs were overturned, drawers gaping, lamps, trays littered on the floor. It deadened him as though he were walking into a party with the noise full on. With peripheral vision he half-realised that some pictures had been torn down. Not the Boudin, not the Vlaminck. Then, or really in the same eye-flash, he saw Lady Ashbrook, and the confusion of the senses cleared away. As he looked, the smell seemed stronger. She was lying in front of her chair, which had been tipped on to its side. Her skirt had run up over the knees, bony knees above the thin fragile legs. Her head was raised higher than her shoulders, with some support, invisible to Humphrey, underneath. There was darkened blood on the carpet. Not much more than if glasses of wine had been spilled. He didn’t realise until later, but there were flecks of blood elsewhere, on furniture and up the wall behind her, pear-shaped drops of blood. There were also scraps of white. He realised none of that, for he was looking only at her head, he could look at nothing else. Her face was turned towards him and the door. The eyes were glaring open, the mouth wide open, too. That was not what transfixed him. In a wound on her temple there was a stirring. Later, he was told that this was a maggot, there already. That didn’t hold his gaze. Along the top of the head, running over hair and forehead, bisecting the forehead between the middle of the ears and projecting nine inches outwards, was a shaft. It wasn’t quite symmetrical above the forehead, but inclined slightly to her right side, and tilted a few degrees downwards. It might have been a new and novel form of hat – no, more hypnotising, a new-grown physiognomic feature.
By his side, Maria crossed herself once more. It was not until later in the morning, after the doctors arrived, that Humphrey understood that he had been looking at the handle of the hammer which Lady Ashbrook, for do-it-yourself purposes, kept in the tool-box about the room. The claws of the hammer had gone through the skull into the brain. Erect above the shaft stood the hammer-head.
Humphrey didn’t move. At last he said to Maria: ‘Well.’ He spoke in English, and brought out the most inadequate of all-purpose English words. ‘Well. There’s nothing we can do. I’d better use the telephone.’
In all the havoc, the telephone hadn’t been interfered with, nor Lady Ashbrook’s card of acquaintances’ numbers, nor her engagement book, open for that month. Absently Humphrey noticed in the space for 30 July: Thirkill, 36 Eaton Square, 1 p.m. She had accepted that invitation.
The number of the police station wasn’t on her card, but Humphrey remembered it. He spoke to the man on duty.
‘This is Humphrey Leigh. I’ve been in the station before. I am ringing from 72 Aylestone Square. Lady Ashbrook’s house. She’s been killed. Yes, murdered. Would you report it at once? Yes, she’s quite dead. I guess she’s been dead a day or so.’
When did Humphrey hear? A few minutes ago, said Humphrey, patiently, used to official enquiries. He had been a friend of the old lady’s, and her daily woman had called him. Is the daily woman a foreigner? Yes, Humphrey answered, and there was a sound of discovery at the other end. There had been a call at 7.46; we couldn’t catch the address. There was a radio car out making enquiries.
‘Tell him where it is.’ Humphrey was brisk. Any action was better than none. ‘I shall be here. And send another of your chaps round. This has to be cleared up–’
‘I get you, sir.’ That was a reply to authority: Humphrey, without thought, had dropped into a former tone of voice. ‘This is trouble all right. An officer will be with you in five minutes.’
Meanwhile, Humphrey was trying to reach Dr Perryman. There would be a police doctor round soon enough, no doubt, but she might as well have her own. Perryman was visiting a patient, but his secretary promised to use his bleep and pass the message on. ‘Make sure he’s told he can’t help. She’s dead. But when he has time I think he would like to see her.’
Inside the five minutes, a policeman arrived. Humphrey met him outside the drawing-room. He was a tall young man, comely, physically confident. He introduced himself as Detective Sergeant – and a surname Humphrey didn’t catch. The policeman told Maria, who had been standing on the stairs with Humphrey, that he would need to question her. Then he and Humphrey entered the shambles of a room. At first glance, he had let out a curse, but when Humphrey said, ‘There she is,’ and looked towards the body the young man became silent and stayed so. He stayed silent for so long that Humphrey started to speak, but then cut off. The man was retching.
Humphrey himself had felt qualms at the sight of that wooden growth. He was quick-nerved about emotional things, not specially squeamish about physical ones, and he had seen a good many bodies torn to pieces in war. Worse than seeing fragments of limbs and flesh, he had seen someone known to him cut in two, torso one way, the rest below the waist another. Like other men of his age, he had become hardened. Yet he had had to detach himself, become clinically cool, at the sight of the old lady’s head. This young man must have seen corpses, certainly suicides, casualties in accidents, maybe a murder victim, but now he couldn’t ta
ke it. He was gulping.
Humphrey said, ‘Come outside.’
As they reached the corridor, the detective sergeant was forcing himself back on duty. Humphrey asked his name again, again lost it, and in the multitude of policemen’s names in the near future never learned it. It could have been Robinson. His voice was like a man choking, but he gave his orders: ‘Nothing must be touched in there.’
‘Quite,’ said Humphrey.
‘Have either of you touched anything up to now?’
Humphrey translated to Maria, and she gave vigorous shakes of her head. She had confronted the sight in that room – the bad spectacle, as she kept calling it – with stronger intestines than the policeman’s, Humphrey thought, stronger than his own.
Humphrey said that he had touched nothing, except the telephone.
‘Really, you shouldn’t have used that.’ The young man was recovering himself. ‘Anyway, that’s done. Nothing else? I’ll have a man stationed outside until we’ve done all our stuff.’
‘Her doctor will probably be coming,’ Humphrey said.
‘He’ll have to keep his hands off, too. I don’t mind him having a look from the door.’
A constable had just come up the stairs, the man dispatched when Maria’s call had mystified the police station. The detective sergeant told him sharply to station himself just inside the drawing-room door, do nothing for the present, permit no one except the police surgeon and senior detective officers to touch or move any object in the room.
‘There’s a body there. She’s not a nice sight, I may as well tell you,’ said the sergeant, in an offhand, experienced fashion, giving an excellent impersonation of a case-hardened detective who took such things without a blench.
He was getting to work. He asked Maria where there was another telephone and told the police station in Gerald Road that the Detective Chief Inspector had to be informed. And the police surgeon as soon as the Chief Inspector approved. He’ll want to have a look himself first, Robinson said, becoming even more knowledgeable. Bodies don’t run away. The doctor can wait half an hour. While waiting, the sergeant proceeded to score up some credit for himself. There were others taking notes, but he felt he ought to have his own on the record. He was an arrogant young man, but Humphrey rather liked him.
Humphrey had to translate for Maria. He learned little that he didn’t already know, except that her husband was a waiter in a Fulham Road café. She had arrived that morning at her usual time, about 7.40. She had put a kettle on for coffee, and then went upstairs. She had noticed the drawing-room door was open. Then she had seen what they had all seen. She had noticed one other thing, when she went down again in search of Humphrey. The door of the garden room (that is the room giving on to the stairs which led down into the garden) was also wide open.
‘That will do nicely for the present. I don’t require either of you any more, thank you. The Chief Inspector will want to talk to you. Thank you again.’ The sergeant was enjoying his last minutes in charge. He was also polite in his offhand fashion.
‘Oh, I didn’t ask you. The next of kin ought to be informed. Can you tell me who they are?’
‘She has a son, Lord Pevensey. When I last heard about him, he was living in Morocco.’ Humphrey had met Lord Pevensey only once in his life.
‘In touch?’
‘He’s not been here lately, I think.’ Humphrey went on: ‘She really was in touch with her grandson, posted in Germany. He was visiting her a fortnight before.’ If it would help, Humphrey offered to ring up the divisional headquarters, and get in touch with Loseby.
By this time, half a dozen policemen were in the house, two of them in plain clothes. The local Detective Chief Inspector heard about Humphrey’s account and the possible exits and entries through the garden. He made telephone calls, had a conversation with Humphrey, made notes and told him with affable respect that there would be time for a formal statement later. It was all quick and practised. A police surgeon arrived, certified death, made his statement and left, while Dr Perryman joined Humphrey in the hall. Perryman was not allowed to go into the drawing-room but, as the young policeman conceded, could watch from outside.
‘This is a bad business,’ Perryman said to Humphrey, in a reflective manner, his fine eyes not focused on the body or anything inside the room.
More policemen were arriving. ‘I can’t do anything useful here,’ Perryman said to Humphrey, and they went downstairs.
‘Of course,’ Perryman observed, as though talking to himself, ‘she would have died soon anyway.’
‘She was healthy, wasn’t she?’
‘She was eighty-two. She might have lived a few more years. She might have died this summer.’
‘Anyway,’ said Humphrey, ‘this was an ugly way to die.’ That was the second time a remark of Celia’s left its echo.
‘It may have been more merciful than the way she was frightened of,’ Perryman said. ‘They don’t know how she died, do they? If that head wound killed her, she would have felt almost nothing. Not more than bumping her head against a wall. Then – no pain, just out. Some people die very easy.’
‘I hope she didn’t know who killed her.’
‘What difference would that make?’
‘It wouldn’t be good to die in fear.’
‘It would soon be over. And that’s the end.’ Dr Perryman said it as though he were talking to a patient. ‘Perhaps we make too much of death after all. Our ancestors lived with it more sensibly than we do, I often think. They didn’t try to pretend it doesn’t happen.’
All that was true, Perryman wasn’t a stereotyped man, his thoughts were his own, but Humphrey had had enough of them that morning. Just as he had enough of a piece of deviousness when he got on the telephone to Loseby’s headquarters. He was answered by a girl, presumably a WRAC, cool and friendly.
‘No, sir. Captain Lord Loseby isn’t here at the moment. He is in England on compassionate leave.’
Humphrey said: ‘Surely he had returned from compassionate leave two weeks before.’
‘That is so, sir, but I believe he was summoned back because of his grandmother’s condition last Thursday.’
Humphrey had spoken to the old lady on Saturday afternoon. She was in caustic spirits, walking strongly in the Square garden. She would have been surprised to learn that Loseby had been recalled to London on her account.
‘I can give you the London address we have for him, sir.’
The London address was 72 Aylestone Square, London, SW2.
What was Loseby playing at, one of his women? Humphrey didn’t doubt that he was capable of any kind of action. But this could be embarrassing. There were going to be police enquiries. Humphrey, like most others that day, assumed that this was a burglar’s killing, but the routine would check the movements of any connection of the old lady, certainly her grandson. The police would discover this story. Humphrey wasn’t certain whether it would be wiser to tell them first.
He felt worn down, not so much by the shock of that morning as by the gritty reticences round him. He hadn’t heard a straightforward utterance since he set foot in the ravished drawing-room. But he did hear one about half-past one, when Kate, skin flushed, eyes lit up, came, almost at a run, into his dining-room where he was eating bread and cheese.
‘I heard it on the one o’clock news,’ she said. ‘I suppose it’s true?’
‘Yes, it’s true enough.’
‘She’s been killed?’
‘Murdered.’
Kate might have been in tears, or in one of her tempers. She broke out, ‘It’s so bloody unfair. After being told that there was nothing wrong with her. Good news. And she only had ten days to enjoy it.’
It was curiously childish. He had never heard her so naïve, but he felt better for hearing it, and very fond of her.
Part Two
10
A few minutes after Humphrey left the house, Detective Chief Superintendent Frank Briers entered. He asked a couple of quiet question
s of the policeman on duty outside, gave a couple of quiet instructions. Any other entrances? There is another policeman outside the garden door? The same instruction was to be passed on to him. No one was to be allowed inside except his own officers and the technical people. Then Briers looked at the lock on the front door, said it must be changed, and went upstairs. He was followed by a young Detective Inspector Shingler, who had been sitting beside him in the police car. Shingler had already been allotted to the chief Scenes of Crime job.
Briers himself was still under forty. He was restlessly springy on his feet, exuding force and energy, middle height, built like a professional footballer, light above the waist, muscular thighs. His face was neat-featured, not specially distinguished to a spectator unless and until his eyes were caught. They weren’t the eyes others expected in a detective, not sharp and concentrated. For that the spectator would have done better to take a look, under the general air of composure, at Humphrey Leigh. Briers’ eyes were brilliant enough, deep-coloured, a startling blue. They were the kind of eyes, set under fine brow-ridges, that innocent persons expected to see in artists or musicians, and seldom did.
It was an accident that he had been given this new assignment. After the first survey, the local police station wasted no time. It was clear enough that the murder of Lady Ashbrook was bound to make the news. They tried to summon the Chief Detective of the Division. He was out on another case. Within minutes, the station made an appeal to Scotland Yard. Briers was by chance unoccupied, the appropriate rank, with a reputation already made, tipped to go higher. By 9.20 a good deal was already in train. He had sent off two men with whom he had worked before to get an office organised at the police station. Photographers and laboratory technicians were due to arrive. Briers’ favourite pathologist should be at the house before long.
Briers went alone into Lady Ashbrook’s drawing-room. ‘Give me ten minutes,’ he had said softly to Shingler. He stayed still, a yard or so from the body. His senses were alive. He was getting impressions as Humphrey had done not two hours before. Some of Briers’ impressions were similar to Humphrey’s, but imbibed with more purpose and concentration. It wasn’t the first time he had been inside a ransacked room: there were things to look for. Some of his thoughts were different from Humphrey’s. A suspicion hadn’t crystallised, but was somewhere, as it were in solution, at the back of his mind.