A Coat of Varnish

by C. P. Snow

  Briers laughed out loud. The question sounded curiously academic, and curiously untypical of the other man.

  ‘I don’t recall running across a case myself. There must be a few. I doubt if there is any family relation where there hasn’t been a murder.’

  Humphrey, ceasing to be immersed in any reflections, said: ‘I don’t believe that Loseby could have done it. The trouble is, in this sort of shambles, anything seems possible. And that’s true the more one happens to have seen.’

  ‘The trouble is, we’ve both seen too much. I agree with you, it’s harder to say, full stop, it’s just not on.’

  Briers opened a cupboard, brought out a bottle, and they each had a drink. They didn’t return to the subject. It might have been unexpected, even to themselves, two stable experienced men, confiding how at times, against all sense and reason, it was hard to disbelieve.

  15

  On the following Tuesday, Humphrey was again asked to call at the police station. This time it was not Briers’ voice, but a deferential one, punctuated by glottal stops, which spoke on the telephone. ‘Inspector Shingler here. The name won’t mean anything, but I’m one of the chief’s team. I don’t want to trouble you, sir, but there’s a little point you might be able to clear up. It’s nothing to do with your statement, of course, just a little point we have to shift out of the way – someone has been helping us with our enquiries.’

  At that phrase, Shingler’s voice had a faint inflection, one knowledgeable man to another. The phrase had already appeared several times in the Press, the smooth talk of official handouts. The papers had nothing to go on, in spite of those references. There were already signs of criticism. One popular Sunday had run a three-inch headline. What has happened to our police? The article wasn’t specifically concerned with the Belgravia murder, and might have been written before. Nevertheless, the chance was too good to miss, and there were several hundred indignant words, appealing for the safety of the old and infirm, all the other Lady Ashbrooks of the country.

  As for Lady Ashbrook herself, Humphrey had seen only one more personal notice. With nothing to do, he had gone into his club, which didn’t often happen; and, as also didn’t often happen, he had skimmed through the weekend journals. It was curious how habits dropped away. Not so long ago he and his organisation bought such journals as a matter of course, not now.

  To his surprise, he found in the New Statesman a longish article entitled ‘Establishment Incarnate’. Down the page the name of Madge Ashbrook kept glaring out. Humphrey began to read with twisted amusement, but then his emotions became more mixed. The piece was signed with a woman’s name, and soon he guessed that this was a daughter, or more likely a granddaughter, of an old acquaintance.

  To anyone who knew some private language, it was a certainty that the writer was upper-class, detesting her origins, determined to believe what all good progressives believed. In too many ways for Humphrey’s comfort, she might have been his own daughter. The writer commented that she – Madge Ashbrook – was the Establishment at its most typical. She had married into the top of the old aristocracy, so far as there was one. Then, in circumstances carefully concealed by an Establishment cover-up (fair comment, Humphrey thought), she married again into the new political–commercial aristocracy. She had always lived among the rich. She had always known, without thinking, what right-thinking people should and would decide.

  That was the strength of the Establishment, they didn’t need to cogitate, they knew by instinct. Madge Ashbrook had known that it was right to appease Hitler, right to get rid of Edward VIII, right to regard Chamberlain as a saviour, and then right to deify Winston Churchill. She had never had an original idea in her life, and yet she and her kind had great influence. She was an entirely ordinary woman. If she had been born in a different environment, it was easy to imagine her as a housewife in Manchester, bringing up her children in a strict old-fashioned way, devoted to a loving, over-possessive family life. (Was this girl, Humphrey thought, working off a grudge of her own?) Nevertheless, privileged as she was, Madge Ashbrook had once been glamorous. Very glamorous, so all the memoirs reported.

  She had been one of the beautiful young women who might have known – probably did know – Rupert Brooke, Julian Grenfell, Patrick Shaw-Stewart, Raymond Asquith, in that idyllic time before the 1914–18 war, a war of which Madge, of course, must have unquestioningly approved. She had survived and the young men hadn’t, and she passed on to shine as one of the beautiful young women of the twenties, the last stars of a decaying civilisation. It was a worthless civilisation, but still she and the other beautiful women had shone in it, and seemed to have enjoyed it. Now she and nearly all the rest of them had gone. Où sont les neiges d’antan?

  Humphrey was, despite himself, a trifle touched. This girl had a romantic heart. But he wished that she had been able to resist that last flourish.

  On his second visit to the police station, Humphrey was once more conducted to the Murder Room, but Frank Briers wasn’t there. The invitation hadn’t come from him. More likely, Humphrey thought, it was the young man Shingler making a new acquaintance, conceivably a useful one. He would certainly have known that Humphrey had been talking in private with Briers for hours on the previous Friday. He could have heard murmurs about their earlier connection.

  Though Briers was absent, a dozen of his officers had been collected in the Murder Room. There were several Scenes of Crime men, detective sergeants Humphrey hadn’t heard of. He was finding it hard to identify faces and remember names. There were two women, whose rank he didn’t catch, pretty in an active, hearty fashion, rather like less peach-fed versions of the county girls with whom Humphrey had gone hunting in his youth.

  The matter which had been Shingler’s reason or pretext for invoking Humphrey turned out to be puzzling but insignificant. The person who had been helping them with their enquiries was a youth who had offered himself. This was the ‘silly young man’ Briers had mentioned. The boy was trying to help, Briers said. ‘The chief’s got that wrong,’ Shingler remarked knowingly, not long after they had told Humphrey the facts. ‘All that guy wants is to feel important. It’s his chance to get into the public eye.’

  The youth delivered newspapers round the Square and in the neighbourhood. His story was that, on the Sunday morning after the murder, at the usual time, about eight o’clock, he pushed Lady Ashbrook’s paper – she took only one – through her letter-box. As he did so, he had a vague memory that he heard sounds of a thumping nature from within the house. He thought nothing of it until he learned that the old lady had been killed. He did know that Maria, the daily woman, didn’t work in the house on Sundays. He thought that it was right to pass his information to the police. ‘It might be useful.’

  ‘So it would be,’ said Shingler, ‘if he ever heard it. Bloody little show-off.’

  The boy didn’t know, and hadn’t been told, that the police were certain that Lady Ashbrook had been murdered the night before. The chief of the Scenes of Crime squad, Shingler, was more than usually assertive. They were sure that no one had been in the house that Sunday morning. It was too much to imagine that someone else, taking all precautions known to man, leaving no prints, traces, relics of occupation, had been lurking in the house hours after the murderer had left. Not only lurking, but amusing himself by making violent noises.

  ‘It’s a bit of tomfoolery. It stands to sense it is.’

  ‘It might have been a poltergeist,’ Bale said sedately. He had scarcely spoken, but Humphrey had recognised that he was the senior officer there. Humphrey couldn’t decide whether that was a serious suggestion. Policemen could be as addicted to the supernatural as anyone else, he thought.

  They were asking Humphrey if he had anything to suggest. Did he know the lad? Humphrey said no, but he would recognise him by sight. He was efficient. Papers came regularly, on time, on the rare occasions when there were no strikes in Fleet Street. Loud police laughter: strikers of any kind, anywhere, were not their
favourite characters. Could the lad have mixed up that Sunday with a day when he might have heard some noise, Humphrey enquired. Even the Monday, when at that time in the morning there would have already been several people in the house, Maria, himself, the local sergeant.

  That had been thought of, they said. The lad stood on his dignity. The day was Sunday. He remembered the thick load of Sunday papers.

  ‘Forget it,’ Shingler said. ‘It’s not worth any more buggering trouble. Get rid of him.’

  Bale gave a judicious nod.

  ‘He must have made a mistake,’ he said in a kind paternal fashion. ‘There isn’t any other explanation.’ That sounded distinctly prosaic, but no one at any time in the future did any better, though the question came up again.

  For Humphrey, it was being an unprofitable morning. The room cleared, and he was left with the three who worked most intimately with Briers. That was not a source of insensate excitement. They were polite, respectfully matey. He was given cups of the inescapable police tea.

  Shingler was much the cleverest of the three, he thought. He was also on the make. It didn’t need much practice in professional assessment to tell one that. At sight, Humphrey rather liked Bale. He might be stiff, sober, over-correct, a pillar of society. But, then, you needed pillars here and there, and this one wasn’t an empty man. Humphrey wouldn’t have been surprised to find that he had some private expertness, right outside the force.

  Flamson didn’t make any impression. Coarse-featured, coarse-fibred, why had Frank Briers picked him out? There must have been dozens of detectives as good or better. Perhaps Briers had to take what he could get. In any organisation, one couldn’t be too finicky: people were more interchangeable than it was agreeable to think.

  As a general reflection, that could have applied. In the particular case, it wouldn’t. For the past twenty-four hours Flamson had been more useful to Briers than any of the others. Humphrey didn’t know, and had no means of knowing, that the inner squad, Briers included, had suddenly become both puzzled and disappointed. This had showed when Briers and his inner group could talk together, all others barred. In secret, under the careful words, they had assumed that the will would give them some pointers. The day before, Briers and the inner squad had been informed about its contents. It told them nothing at all.

  The will had no picturesque features. According to Lady Ashbrook’s solicitor, it was almost a replica of a previous will, except that a bequest to an American acquaintance had been deleted, the man having recently died. All the bequests were small, £200 to Maria, £300 to Dr Perryman, £200 to Lady Ashbrook’s hairdresser. There was nothing to Loseby, except a note that she had made some provision for him during her lifetime. Possessions had been carefully bestowed, none of much value, candlesticks to Celia, other silver to acquaintances, a couple of decanters and runners to Humphrey himself. The pictures were not listed. The residue of the estate was left to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund.

  The residue of the estate, since nothing substantial had been left anywhere else, meant in effect the whole of it, the tail end of the leasehold, pictures, bits of jewellery, all thrown in. There was, however, a surprise which upset the police and which, when the news spread, astonished Lady Ashbrook’s acquaintances. The solicitors judged it right to drop a hint to Briers. The estate was proved to be quite small. There would be none of the money that had been expected. All assets added up, there wasn’t likely to be £50,000. To Briers’ squad, the will, the disappearance of wealth, came as a setback. ‘No bloody motive there,’ said Shingler. He added: ‘Except for the Cancer Research Fund. Perhaps they did it.’ Brash humour was not well received. He recovered himself. ‘It’s just as well we haven’t ruled out the professional.’

  ‘We never have done,’ Briers said. Spontaneous as he seemed, he was impenetrable after a reverse.

  ‘I don’t know.’ It was Flamson, expression clouded, who couldn’t shape his thoughts. ‘It doesn’t fit in. Too many loose ends.’

  ‘Right, George.’ Briers didn’t reveal his own thoughts, but he was following Flamson’s. He was encouraging them, exuding energy. The thing to do in a time like this was to go on exactly as they were. The others didn’t know whether he was just soldiering on or whether he really had some foresight. Probably not, he was to say later. But he also blamed himself for being dense. This latest news, which appeared as a setback, should have told him more. It was Flamson, a simple soul, who mutely suspected that some matters seemed too simple to be true.

  16

  Frank Briers, in Humphrey’s sitting-room, was comfortable, though not restful, in the mode of action. It would have been hard to read his expression, or from it guess what progress his operation was making. Like others who were designed for action, he was immersed in the operation itself. You could have said that he was too busy to think, or alternatively too busy thinking. It was obsessive, yes; but he had learned to pace himself. This was some days after Humphrey’s second visit to the police station. Briers had not previously accepted Humphrey’s standing invitation. Now Humphrey had asked him for a specific evening because Alec Luria wanted to meet him.

  Luria had a collector’s interest in able men, especially if they were doing jobs where he was ignorant. Briers, neither forward nor shrinking, had been willing to oblige – and hadn’t needed to be briefed about Luria, saying that he had picked up the name already.

  Briers had arrived a quarter of an hour early, which was not by chance. He could talk to Humphrey as he wouldn’t be able to talk to a stranger; and in the mode of action Briers liked to talk. And yet, Humphrey accepted, though the talk was fluent, it was under control. Briers wasn’t telling Humphrey, to use the old security phrase, any more than he needed to know or, rather, any more than it was useful for him to know. Useful to Briers, that is. If Humphrey had heard the detectives discussing the will, he would have wondered if people he knew were feeling menaced. As it was, to Humphrey, a spectator, it was a vague heaviness, like thunder far away.

  Briers was sitting in an armchair, with a whisky on the coffee-table beside him. Humphrey would have betted that, hearty but disciplined, Briers would take one more drink that evening, no less, no more. He said: ‘The lads are doing their stuff. They are coping with all the houses in the region. Down to Pimlico. They are checking any villain we know about – there are a fair number in the streets at the back of Victoria. Then they’ll go again and counter-check. Masses of paper on my desk already. I must say, Humphrey, if I was a sociologist, I should be gathering quite a lot about the manners and customs of the citizens round about. Particularly what they were doing over a period of three or four hours on a Saturday night.’

  ‘Any luck?’ Humphrey asked. He had a feeling that he was being underestimated. This was conversation not intended to inform.

  ‘It’s early days yet.’ He gazed straight at Humphrey. This might be a time when he was deciding whether to withhold or talk. He went on: ‘We have found one of the old lady’s ten-pound notes. Paid into a shop.’

  Concentrated, active, Briers gazed again at the older man. ‘The first time we talked, did I give you an idea that there are one or two odd things which we don’t understand? Did I do that?’

  ‘You might have done,’ said Humphrey, ‘if you had been talking to someone as bright as you are.’

  Briers added, lightly: ‘There were one or two unusual features about that room. I wonder if you noticed them?’

  Then, switching off, he said: ‘Well, the boys will be busy round the neighbourhood. They’ll be coming nearer home soon. Actually, they’ve been in Eaton Square already.’

  ‘Why ever there?’

  Briers broke into a broad monkey smile: ‘Purely political. If we’re going to turn Pimlico upside down, it’s just as well to make a nuisance of ourselves–’

  To the rich, Briers implied; he wasn’t being candid, Humphrey was certain – though he couldn’t understand why not, any more than he had in the police station understood the echoes of constrai
nt. But Humphrey was forming his suspicion of what Briers in reality thought.

  Briers continued: ‘They’ll be beginning round here before long. You’ll have to account for yourself that Saturday night, of course.’

  ‘They won’t get very far with that.’ Humphrey had been distracted, but now was amused. ‘Remarkably unexciting, even to a sociologist, my dear Frank. I was either reading or watching TV. Probably both.’

  Policeman’s grin from Briers: ‘Quite impossible to prove.’

  Soon, punctual, punctilious, Alec Luria came into the room. There was a beautiful exchange of courtesies, as if each were trying to trump the other. ‘I am happy to have the chance of meeting you, Chief Superintendent.’ ‘Not so happy as I am, Professor.’ ‘I’ve heard so much about your career…’ ‘That’s nothing, that’s nothing, compared with those books of yours.’

  Briers was not the man to be outplayed in any game of etiquette; but Humphrey also noticed that he could jerk himself out of the mode of duty, obsessive duty, and devote himself to a stranger. Any talent-spotter would have marked that down as a good pointer for his future.

  On his side Luria was not the man, ceremonies decently concluded, to lose his sense of sardonic farce. A drink accepted, settled down in another armchair, his length extended, suitable preliminaries about the temperature, the value of the pound and the run-up to the American election, he then said, melancholy eyes not so melancholy: ‘Of course, you have rather the advantage of me, Chief Superintendent. Your men must have given you data about me on paper. Not too suspicious, I hope.’

  Police interviews in Eaton Square, Humphrey had now realised – that was how Briers had been already briefed when Luria’s name was mentioned. Not put off, businesslike, Briers said: ‘Not in the way of business, Professor. You needn’t take out any extra insurance. I hope they didn’t waste too much of your time.’