A Coat of Varnish

by C. P. Snow

  ‘I thought they made a very good job of it, if I may say so. They were very nice with it – do pass that on, if it’s any use to them.’

  Luria was being paternal, suddenly ceasing to be unobtrusive. Then, unobtrusive again, he asked: ‘Stop me if I’m being too inquisitive. But am I right in thinking that all your men on this case are survivors from the purge that we’ve heard about?’

  The ‘purge’ was public knowledge. The Commissioner of Metropolitan Police had, over the past three years, eliminated something like a fifth of the entire CID. (That is, the detective branch, Scotland Yard.) On the grounds of most varieties of corruption, criminal connivance and conspiracy. There had been prosecutions, and people who followed the trials had followed something of what lay behind them; but maybe it required a man as practised with information as Luria to understand the sheer scale of the scandal.

  It was an occasion when Briers felt it best to be spontaneous, though, Humphrey was thinking, perhaps not as spontaneous as he seemed.

  ‘They wouldn’t be at work if they hadn’t survived, you know.’ He sounded bluff and cheerful.

  ‘Can you tell me, it must have made an effect on morale, mustn’t it? Everyone must have lost men they knew very well, casualties all over the force.’

  ‘There were heavy casualties, of course there were. It had to be done. You can take my oath on that. Some of us would have been glad if he could have finished off a few more.’

  ‘I don’t believe it could have happened in any other police force in the world.’ Luria was solemn. ‘I don’t mean yours is worse than any of the others. On the contrary. But I don’t believe any other force would have stood that purge.’

  ‘Professor, I want to get this a bit clearer. Policemen are very much like anyone else. Uniformed police, in this country anyway, are comparatively honest. You have to remember that they don’t have many temptations. Tiny bits of money offered. Sometimes taken. Not a real problem, though. Detectives are a different kettle of fish. You try to imagine the way they are living their whole lives. It’s a hazard of the job. They have to spend a great slice of their time with professional crooks. And crooked lawyers. That’s their world. It isn’t a very pretty world. A good many of the professional crooks and the crooked lawyers are doing very well for themselves. They make it easy for detectives to have a share in the loot. It really isn’t all that surprising that a fair number of detectives decided it was pleasant to play in the kitchen. Once that started, it became part of the set-up. Pleasant to receive a share of the dibs. Pleasant to be one of the lads. But, even more, unpleasant not to be one of the lads. Anyone who got into the CID soon discovered what he had to conform to.’

  Luria nodded. ‘That I can imagine.’

  ‘Look here. Let me speak for myself. I don’t think that I’m specially corrupt. But men are easy to corrupt, granted the right conditions. You’d accept that?’

  Luria nodded again. ‘Surely.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m specially uncorrupt, either. I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t feel the temptation. The bosses would have liked to take me in. I was on the way up. I was the kind of character they wanted. And I could have made a killing.’

  ‘Why didn’t you, Frank?’ Humphrey’s question was affectionate, sarcastic.

  ‘Why wouldn’t you have done?’ Briers replied in kind.

  ‘No, tell us.’ Luria was paternal again.

  ‘Well, maybe two reasons. One respectable, one not so respectable. Long lines of decent honest chapel people behind me.’ For once Luria didn’t take an English reference, and Humphrey intervened – non-conformist protestants, that means. ‘It would have gone against that grain,’ Briers continued. ‘But more, not to be too kind to myself, because I’m a prudent sort of animal. I decided that they would be caught in the long run. Everyone knew. Someone, some day, would be tough enough to act. And I didn’t think any money in the world was worth that risk. And also I happened to be ambitious. Money might be fun, but if I had to choose I’d a damn sight rather try for the top jobs.’

  ‘You’re underestimating yourself, you know,’ Luria said.

  ‘Have it your own way,’ Briers replied. ‘Anyway, here I am. I’m a survivor. A good many of them aren’t. They made a killing. But quite a lot of the offices on the best floors are empty now. Former occupants don’t need them any more.’

  ‘Why don’t they need those offices?’

  ‘Because they’re in jail.’

  There was a pause. Luria said that most of this sounded too true to be comforting. If this was what happened in a disciplined force, how was one going to keep societies even tolerably straight? Briers, younger than the other two, more hopeful than they were, more active, more robust, replied that he was a rough and ready liberal. You couldn’t be a policeman and think too well of human beings – but we weren’t utterly lost. You couldn’t change them inside, but you might be able to change their behaviour. (Luria for an instant was taken aback to hear this kind of talk from a police officer.) But we weren’t living like that. We had to get on with our jobs within the social limits. Clean things up, preserve what we could, prevent things getting worse. The law wasn’t everything, but it was something.

  ‘There,’ said Luria, ‘I am absolutely with you. Heart and soul.’

  ‘So I feel pretty content working on this case, and if you ask most of my lads you’d find they would say the same. If you forget about intellectuals’ – Briers was breaking out into a matey gibe – ‘people with practical jobs generally feel more or less at home in this world. It’s something of a saving grace.’

  Luria nodded but said pensively: ‘So long as other people believe the jobs are useful. So long as they believe in what you are doing.’

  ‘They’d damn well better. As I was saying, the law isn’t everything, but it’s about all we’ve got.’

  Turning to Humphrey, Luria remarked with a gentle, comradely, sardonic smile that he felt better, listening to their friend. As a kind of gesture of solidarity, he asked for another drink. He looked seriously at Briers, and said: ‘I tell you what. I’d be happier if anyone round here was angrier about this murder of yours. To be sure, some of them are sad. But they’re not fighting angry. They don’t want any revenge. They just take it as something that happens, like the weather. They’re letting what happens get on top of them. Society has just become too much for them.’

  ‘Believe me,’ said Briers. ‘I want that man as much as I want anything.’

  ‘Yes, you make me feel better.’ Again Luria looked at the policeman as though they were intimates. ‘I am sure you wish you had capital punishment back.’

  There was a short hiatus. Briers, calm and positive as before, said: ‘Professor, today I have fifty-six detectives working on this case. Tomorrow I expect some more. I am just referring to detective sergeants and above. So far as I know, and I fancy I do know, every one of them would agree with you, and two or three of my party are going to have real influence in the force.’

  ‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ Luria said.

  ‘But I ought to tell you, unfortunately I’m the odd man out. I’m against having capital punishment back.’

  Luria didn’t often look astonished, but now he did. The great prophetic face had gone blank, and his mouth opened and shut before he went on again.

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘I don’t believe in it. I don’t believe it works.’

  ‘You mean, it doesn’t stop murders? It wouldn’t have stopped this one?’

  ‘I’m being pragmatic. The evidence is on that side.’

  ‘I take leave to doubt it. But I’m not going to argue with you there. The real point is quite different.’

  ‘So you do believe in hanging?’

  ‘Not hanging.’ Luria was recovering his poise. ‘Too many sexual connotations. But I certainly believe in getting rid of some criminals. Shooting, if you like. The least messy method we can find.’

  It was Briers’ turn to be astonished.
He wasn’t as fluent as usual. ‘Haven’t you thought, it would be a throwback, it would make the place a bit less civilised?’

  ‘That’s a reason why I believe in it. I gave up accepting liberal optimism a long time ago. I’m not in the least interested in deterrents, pro or contra. I’m not interested in false hopes. I am interested in society preserving its force and virtue. I used the word “revenge” a little while ago. That wasn’t loose or absent-minded. It’s a profound need of society to take its revenge on people who offend its deepest instincts. I’m sure that society can’t be healthy if we pretend that need doesn’t exist. I know that that’s not being pragmatic. Nor were you, when you gave yourself away. You said it would make the place a bit less civilised. That’s not pragmatic. You ought to ask yourself, what is your real motive. The difference between us is, you believe human beings are more civilised than they are, or perhaps can ever be.’

  Briers had had practice in various aspects of the argument, but not this one. He said, in a less buoyant tone: ‘I shouldn’t say I was all that civilised. We’ve had some child murders in this country. Beyond description. If I’d caught the people who did them, and had had a gun handy, and thought I could get away with it, I’d have shot them without thinking twice. I might have done the same to the man who killed this old lady. That wouldn’t have done anyone any harm.’ He added tersely: ‘Except the ones I got rid of. But I still think it would do harm to go through the whole apparatus of the law and string them up or go through any other ritual execution we could invent. Have you ever heard the noise in a prison when someone was being hanged? I did once, when I was just starting in the force. It might change your mind.’

  ‘No,’ said Luria. ‘I’m not moved by that. You’re trying to make life hygienic. It can’t be, and we have to face it.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Briers said, not outfaced. ‘We had better agree to differ, hadn’t we?’

  The conversation changed. Often they were at one and there was an understanding between them. In time, Briers said that he had to break away. There would be reports waiting for him in his office, another couple of hours’ work before he could leave for home. There would be supper ready for him when he reached home around ten o’clock. Policemen’s wives were well trained, he said with a smile that might have been dismissive or salacious. But Humphrey, who knew about his wife’s health, also knew that it was neither.

  Humphrey thought later, not that night, that the meeting hadn’t gone exactly as one might have expected. A high priest of Western civilisation, father figure among Jewish intellectuals, illustrious academic; on the other hand, a tough, striving professional policeman. They got talking on crime and punishment, and what did you anticipate? Not quite what had happened. Well, in those days, for Humphrey to witness that couple surprising each other didn’t come amiss. It was a glimpse of the human comedy, of which he wasn’t having enough, and he had enjoyed it.

  17

  The August days were passing, without any open news. One Saturday, Humphrey saw Kate on the other side of the Square, and went across. He said he had heard nothing. Then he looked round at the houses, shining blandly in the sun, and added: ‘Life goes on.’

  ‘It couldn’t do anything else, could it? Not one of your more original remarks, you know…’

  She was wearing her ugly, disrespectful, alluring grin and Humphrey, spirits lightened, tried to justify himself. ‘Would anyone guess that the country’s going broke?’ He didn’t tell her, she was quick enough to discern it, that he wasn’t thinking of that trouble but of others coming nearer. No one had yet been charged with the murder. He had his own doubts, hazy, not yet crystallised. He had no doubt at all that Frank Briers was telling him, with an appearance of absolute spontaneity, things which meant nothing and keeping back what he was really doing. Humphrey had learned that Loseby and Susan had been questioned several times. Briers told Humphrey nothing of this. Humphrey would have liked to know more of other personal enquiries. Briers was a master of the double finesse. It was the first time he had exercised that talent at Humphrey’s expense. Of course, he told Humphrey, they were interested in a great many people’s movements on the evening and night of 24/25 July. Only an imbecile, Humphrey thought, with both irritation and anxiety, would have been surprised by that piece of information.

  He was irked that Briers went on treating him as an old friend but without trust. Still, it didn’t prevent Humphrey from believing that he knew where the police were looking. If that was so, then there were acquaintances of his living in suspense. Nevertheless, as he had said with solemnity that morning, life went on. Not long afterwards, at a dinner party, he saw an eye-flash of Kate’s showing that she had remembered. He had judged it safer not to tell her his suspicions. There might be some at this table under strain.

  Actually, the dinner, though not notable for well-being, proceeded without incident. It was given by Tom Thirkill in the apartment in Eaton Square. Thirkill had been obliged to cancel the luncheon where Lady Ashbrook was to have been the prize guest, the last acceptance in her engagement book. Nevertheless, hospitality unreturned continued to nag at him; it meant presenting others with a moral superiority. Hence this dinner, a large one, such as not many in the neighbourhood would have given in a private house – the Lefroys, Paul and Celia, the Perrymans, Alec Luria, Humphrey, Thirkill’s own daughter. That would pay off those who had entertained Tom Thirkill before Lady Ashbrook’s death, and one or two more just worth collecting. More worth collecting, since Thirkill didn’t propose to squander an evening, was a Cabinet Minister and his wife. Stella Armstrong, his political aide, big and handsome, the most sumptuous of grey eminences, acted without fuss as the hostess.

  Thirkill’s dining-room led out of the drawing-room, was identical in size and furnished with the same confident taste. More pictures round the walls, quieter than those in the other room, and restful. A couple of Cromes, a Chinnery, a set of Bonnington watercolours. Somebody had taken trouble, Humphrey thought, as on his previous visit.

  A chandelier presided over the long table. Under it, napery, silver, glass were shining. The women were wearing long dresses. It occurred to Humphrey that in his youth, for a dinner on this scale, in this place, the men would also have dressed, black ties, or, at some of his first dinner parties, white ones. None was wearing a black tie now. On the other hand, the food, though less lavish, was better than Humphrey recalled, and the wine at least as good. Thirkill himself might not drink, but he must take excellent advice.

  It all looked so safe. Humphrey remembered dinners just before the war which had looked just as safe as this. Most people felt safe until it was too late. So many times Humphrey had seen people apparently thoughtless about danger. There must have been plenty of dinners as privileged as this before a revolution. Perhaps in personal danger, too.

  And yet, from the beginning, the evening wasn’t smooth. At the start, Thirkill was in a persecuted mood. Staring down the table, he asked if anyone realised what was happening to him. It was a kind of pity-seeking question to which there wasn’t an answer. He might be talking of the libel suits, but word was coming down from lawyers, Paul Mason’s father among them, that he was certain to win. Something new in the Press? Nothing of the sort, Thirkill said indignantly. He was inclined to suggest that they were now on his side.

  ‘Do you know what’s happened to me?’ He took a sip from his half-glass of white wine, as though to clear the grit and gravel from his voice. He answered himself: ‘The police.’ He went on. ‘They’ve been round here taking up a couple of hours of valuable time. Do they think I’ve got time to waste? Asking me to account for my movements that night.’

  ‘It’s only a matter of routine, you know.’ That was from Humphrey. As in private with Thirkill, it was difficult to resist trying to soothe him.

  ‘I must say, I wonder if they would have treated a Tory Member as they did me. I wonder how many of our chaps have black marks against their names. I wonder how many Tories are on the MI5 files and how
many of ours.’

  Thirkill seemed to have regressed to his radical youth. He was looking hard at Humphrey, whom he suspected would know the exact answer. Humphrey looked innocently back, as he had become practised in doing, from all the years in the old job.

  Luria put in, like a calm referee: ‘If it’s any comfort to you, Mr Thirkill, they treated me just the same.’

  ‘Did they, by God, and you’re an American visitor–’

  ‘Oh, I’ve been on the spot, too. For what it’s worth, I’ve talked to some of your senior policemen. And I got a very favourable impression. They are having a difficult assignment round here.’

  Luria had his knack of bestowing benevolence and authority at the same time.

  Then Celia spoke. Humphrey had noticed that, in the drawing-room before dinner, she had been talking more freely than he had heard her, while Paul had been silent. It was to be the last time they accepted an invitation together: they had decided to part back in July.

  Celia said, tone light but clear, and curiously insistent: ‘Don’t you think it’s good to know what everyone else is going through? Mr Thirkill, have you ever had a policeman ask you questions before? I haven’t. Policemen look different when they ask you questions. It made me think.’

  ‘There’s something in that, Mrs Hawthorne.’ Thirkill’s smile had a sudden open exposed charm. ‘There’s something in that.’

  ‘It’s what I’ve been telling the middle classes since I was a girl,’ said Stella Armstrong, who was as impeccably middle-class as Celia herself but who suddenly spoke out of her duty to Transport House.

  And yet, though Thirkill could control his paranoia, or alternately have it for moments wiped away as a fit of sexual jealousy might have been, the evening was still not smooth. To those with nerves alert, and there were several round the table, disquiet was hanging in the air. Throughout the conversation about Thirkill’s ill-treatment, Humphrey had watched Kate listening to Dr Perryman, who was sitting beside her: listening with rapt attention, with the mixture of affectionate mischief and concern that she had often shown to Humphrey himself. That, more than he cared for, produced a disquiet of his own.