A Coat of Varnish

by C. P. Snow

  ‘That’s not the point.’ Perryman spoke loudly, fiercely.

  Humphrey was puzzled, genuinely puzzled. ‘I don’t follow–’

  ‘That’s not the point. That’s nothing like the point. I’m not worried about the police. There’s nothing in it for them. But I wanted to ask you – that’s why I told Kate I should like some advice – is there a chance that they’ll pass the word on to the Inland Revenue?’

  Surprise, matter-of-fact surprise. Humphrey couldn’t help suppress a smile. Dr Perryman was not smiling.

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. They’ll have slightly more important things on their plate.’

  ‘Do they pass this kind of information on to the Inland Revenue?’

  ‘I haven’t the slightest idea. They’ve got to clear up a murder.’

  ‘If they do.’

  ‘If they do,’ Humphrey repeated, ‘I shouldn’t think they’d be interested in someone getting away with a little income tax. And it must be fairly little, mustn’t it?’

  ‘Not much,’ the doctor said.

  ‘Well, then. You know, you’re getting things out of proportion. I doubt if you’ll hear anything more about it. I’m prepared to bet they don’t. But if the worst comes to the worst, and they do make a signal to your tax inspector, it’s not specially serious after all.’

  ‘That’s what I keep telling him.’ Alice Perryman gazed at her husband with maternal beneficent love. ‘It’s not so serious. We shall forget it in a week.’

  ‘And I keep telling you, the news will go around.’ When he spoke to her, his tone was trusting, but he became indignant and harsh. ‘Would you like to get into the news for anything as piffling as this? Just silly.’ He spat out the word. ‘There’s the man who cadged his takings on the side. And thought he could get it tax free.’ He spoke with as much outrage as though someone else had committed the offence. Then he quietened, and became anxious, concentrated. ‘What’s more, these taxes aren’t a joke, you know.’ He was speaking to his wife. ‘They might get me for three times what I owe them. Just to teach people a lesson. Three times, you know.’

  He said to Kate, who had been listening with furrowed acute attention. ‘Just you think. Three times. It’s not a flea bite. I’ve never made the money I could have done, that’s one of the problems.’

  Humphrey said: ‘People do tell me you could have done.’

  Dr Perryman replied: ‘Yes, I could have done.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  Perryman’s expression had become transformed. Rage, indignation had disappeared. He shone with a kind of radiance, subdued but elated, and his tone became thoughtful, temperate. ‘I wanted to do something different. After all, one only has one life. Any competent man can get success as a consultant. And any man a class better can get success in what they call research. Without false modesty, it could have been easy. I wanted something better. I wanted to satisfy myself. That’s all that matters. In the long run, that’s all that matters. It may sound ridiculous to you’ – he gazed out into the room – ‘but I didn’t want to make medicine just a shade more scientific. Hundreds of men are doing that every day. If you understand me right, if I wanted to make it anything, I wanted to make it a good deal less. That is, until I had made a new start.’

  He began to talk as he had done to Humphrey in the Square gardens, the morning after Lady Ashbrook had returned from hospital. He was eloquent, fervent, borne up on his own speech. The mind–body relation (he was repeating himself). What did we mean when we talked about the will? (Or spirit, or even mind?) His wife gently intervened just once: that wasn’t so difficult if one had faith. She was sorry he hadn’t got there yet. They looked at each other without conflict. He went on. We know so little. How did the mind affect the body, and the other way round? Until we know that we know nothing. It was worth just spending one’s life to get just a little way.

  ‘Have you got anywhere?’ Humphrey’s question wasn’t just a polite throwaway, but curious, sceptical, interested.

  The doctor’s answer was flatly sensible, not exalted, not cast down. ‘I’m not sure that I’ll ever know. One’s only got one life. As I said before. It may not be long enough.’

  ‘Of course,’ Humphrey said, ‘there are some questions which haven’t any answers. And never will have.’

  ‘Of course there are. But we’re no good if we don’t ask them.’

  Possessively, Alice Perryman said: ‘He’s thought about these things all his life. He told me so when I first met him.’

  Perryman hadn’t asked for any more advice, or referred again to the matter of the notes. When Humphrey and Kate had said goodbye and were walking in the street, it was that matter, however, about which she began to talk.

  ‘Curious, he’s so keen about money. He is, you know.’

  She said it with cheerful realism. ‘He and old Lady Ashbrook must have made a very good pair. Like French peasants. Trying to chisel each other, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘That’s a trifle hard, isn’t it?’

  ‘You can’t teach me anything about penny-pinching. I’ve had some practice. I know the signs.’ She glanced at him with her ugly, endearing grin. When she was alone with him, she liked being impudent.

  She had another thought: ‘But it does seem odd, doesn’t it? I can understand Lady Ashbrook. She was a born skinflint. The more they are run after, the meaner they get. But it does seem strange in him.’

  They exchanged views – it was one of their pleasures – about acquaintances. Who were generous, who were stingy, why. Yes, expansive people, broad-natured people, could be remarkably stingy. They both had affection for Alec Luria: he was rich, but no one could call him generous. Paul Mason, one of the better young men, was, apart from occasional times when he took out a dozen friends, distinctly careful.

  ‘But it’s not right for Ralph Perryman.’ Kate returned to her first thought and spoke with feeling.

  ‘Perhaps he thinks it is.’ Humphrey’s tone was flippant, sarcastic, dismissing the subject.

  ‘No.’ Kate persisted. ‘He’s much better than that.’

  ‘I dare say.’

  ‘He’s an idealist, isn’t he?’

  ‘Very likely. I don’t know him well enough.’ They were taking their time down Ebury Street, lights in the hotel windows and the top-floor flats. Humphrey had answered indulgently, but with a trace of impatience.

  ‘Have you noticed his eyes? He may have made a mess of things, but he is an idealist, you know. You heard what he said about his career. It sounds like nonsense, but still…’

  ‘My girl,’ Humphrey said, ‘you’re not a push-over for many people, but you are rather a push-over for – the inflated, aren’t you? Call them idealists, if you like.’

  Her arm had been resting closely in touch with his. He felt it stiffen.

  ‘You shouldn’t have said that.’ Her voice was hard and strained.

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘You know why not.’

  So far as he could trust his mind, he had spoken without intention. He could have assured her, and been honest, that he hadn’t meant to refer to her marriage or her husband. Perhaps his tongue was more truthful than his mind.

  ‘If you talk like this, we shall hurt each other,’ Kate said. They walked on in dense silence. It might have been a minute before she broke out. A minute was a long time.

  ‘What’s said can’t be unsaid. We mustn’t say too much.’ Her arm was not stiff now, but she was looking at the pavement as they walked. ‘You needn’t have rubbed it in. I’m in a trap. Do you think I don’t know that? I’m not too bad at not making little mistakes. I only make a big one.’

  He felt her shaking, but it wasn’t with tears, for, taking him by surprise, she was laughing out loud, not bitterly, but as someone who had seen a joke against herself. She said: ‘I can’t tell you much. When I can I will. I promise you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can’t see my way clear. We mustn’t say too much until I do. Because
that really will bind us. But I can say something you know already. I want you. I don’t think it’s altogether one-sided.’

  ‘Now, that’s a triumph of perception, isn’t it?’ It sounded like a gibe, or a denial of gravity, but it was said with love.

  She smiled, but it was she who spoke with the gravity he had held down.

  ‘I’m pretty sure,’ she said, ‘we could make something good.’ In a hurry, she corrected herself. ‘That’s being vain of me, I know it is. But, anyway, I believe I could be giving you a better time than you’re having now. That wouldn’t be too much of a feat, would it? Perhaps that’s not being too vain.’

  Humphrey was touched, as he had been often before, by that singular mixture of realism and diffidence. Was it that which had first captivated him? No, it went deeper than that from the beginning.

  ‘I wish I could guarantee that much for you,’ he said, with simplicity.

  Then silence again, the hot, thick silence of love not yet complete, as they turned down Eccleston Street. ‘I ought to tell you something else. Something perhaps you don’t know. All I’ve just said is true. You’ll hold on to that, won’t you? So will I. This is true, too. It shows you the trap I’ve got into. You’ve understood a bit about my marriage, I’ve realised that all along. Another triumph of perception.’ She gave a smile, but it was wan. ‘But you don’t know it all. I’ll tell you as soon as I can. Though when one’s made a mistake perhaps one never knows it all oneself. Anyway, anything that ever was has gone. It’s all empty, flat and empty. But yesterday he had a letter from a philosopher in Poland, saying how marvellous his work was. He hasn’t had a letter like that for years; he was so overjoyed that I could have cried. And I was happy, too. That’s part of the trap. It’s all that’s left. I had to tell you.’

  Once more they weren’t talking. As they came nearer home, Kate said: ‘Have I depressed you?’

  ‘Yes. But it’s probably better that I understand.’

  In the side street, he took her by the shoulders and kissed her, like a lover. She kissed him back, violently. ‘In that way,’ she muttered, ‘any time.’

  He hesitated, kissed her again. He wanted her. He said: ‘I’m afraid this has to be all or nothing. Don’t you see?’

  ‘You’re thinking of yourself.’

  ‘We both have to, don’t we? Look, I want you to see your way clear.’

  She muttered his name. ‘Then you’ll have to wait.’

  ‘Don’t make me wait too long.’

  She said: ‘I shall be waiting, too.’

  Then, with a tense goodnight, she walked quickly off alone towards the Square.

  20

  After that evening with the Perrymans, Humphrey did not invite Kate to go out with him. For a while, she wanted to withdraw without either of them mentioning it. When he met her, by chance not intention, on an errand in the street, she was lively and loving, and didn’t let him forget that resounding platitude of his: life goes on.

  They couldn’t help but notice that life was going on for the police, as well as for others. Often Humphrey came across detectives he now knew by sight, in their shirt-sleeves and slacks, some of them looking boyish with long, untrimmed hair. One Saturday night a pair of them walked into the local pub, and he asked them to have a drink with him and Alec Luria. They were ready to gossip about their interviews. They liked talking shop. They weren’t so tight-lipped as his security underlings had been, Humphrey thought, but they didn’t give much away.

  Luria started one of his courteous, unflurried professional enquiries. He was as discreet as they were, a question about the case was impermissible, but he had his vocational curiosity, he wanted to learn about a detective’s life, what led them to it, what kept them going. They were complaining, with hearty rancour, about being needed to stay on duty on a Saturday night. They both lived in the distant suburbs, miles away. It would be late before they got home at night. They would get back tired. It interfered with your married life, they said. Policeman’s malady, they said. Worse for the boys in uniform. They complained about their pay. But they relished talking about the job. Luria persevered in searching for what the rewards really were.

  After they had departed, he told Humphrey that there must be human rewards somewhere, those men were more content, or at least more alive, than most. Humphrey said that a good many people, probing into others’ affairs, got some satisfaction. Luria nodded his massive prophetic head, and said, with more weight or sententiousness than was strictly necessary, yes, as the French used to say, people liked living in the odour of man.

  Then Luria said: ‘You notice they didn’t talk about their chief? They all know you see something of him.’ He went on: ‘They don’t know about me. I’ve heard some of them talking about him once or twice. Most of them are in favour of him. He’s a slave driver, but they like having a leader.’

  ‘Most of them?’

  ‘I did hear one stab in the back. From someone who must be a bit higher up the ladder. Quite young. Dark. Too smooth and glossy for a policeman. I didn’t catch his name.’

  For a moment, Humphrey was thinking of Flamson, and described him. Luria shook his head. ‘No, that doesn’t sound right.’ Luria couldn’t trust himself with English accents, but this man might have been a cockney.

  It must be Shingler, Humphrey broke out. Shingler was Briers’ bright particular star, the coming man in the Murder Squad.

  ‘That bright particular star doesn’t think much of his boss. And is mingy and snide about him. Briers wasn’t a copper’s copper, he said. He was a showman. He got there on the work of the real coppers, and then took the credit.’

  Humphrey was cursing. ‘Do you realise that that bastard has been made by Frank Briers? Briers has taken care of his whole career.’ Humphrey went on angrily. Briers really did like talent, talent in his subordinates anywhere. He had been a hungry flyer knocking at the door himself – he was good at giving other hungry flyers a hand.

  ‘If I were he, I should keep an eye on that young man. He could do some damage.’

  ‘Bastard.’

  Luria was giving his melancholy sardonic smile. ‘You don’t often get upset by human frailty, do you? Why now? Don’t you remember the old wail – why does he hate me so much? I’ve never done him any good.’ Luria was remembering. ‘That sounded madly cynical when I first heard it. Life couldn’t be as beastly as that. But folk sayings sometimes have their point. I fancy this one comes from the old Russian pale. It must have come from my people, mustn’t it? It can’t be Russian.’

  As he grew older, Luria had come to refer to ‘his people’ as though he were responsible for them all.

  There might be a time, Humphrey thought, when he could ask Briers whether Shingler was the model of loyalty. It would be a delicate operation, and he couldn’t attempt it now. The candour between them was still qualified. It hadn’t been a surprise to Humphrey to hear that questionings were going on methodically among people he knew. The police teams hadn’t stopped their visits to the purlieus of Pimlico; but there were others, more repetitive, to more privileged persons. Paul Mason had been questioned again, Kate had been asked to explain some of her answers about Susan and Loseby. It seemed bizarre, but Monty Lefroy had been visited, which he seemed to regard as entirely fitting. Mrs Burbridge had been taken over a timetable of Humphrey’s own movements. So had Stella Armstrong over Tom Thirkill’s. Susan Thirkill, so Kate reported over the telephone, had been interrogated with an appearance of informality, in her own apartment, not once but twice, for something like five hours each time, by Superintendent Bale. Briers himself was said to have spent long periods with Loseby and some brother officers of his.

  The process was grinding on, but Briers had called at Humphrey’s house on several evenings, talked with affectionate openness, given bulletins about his wife’s illness, gazed at Humphrey with those splendid candid eyes, and given no hint of such enquiries. It didn’t even seem like professional caution. He should have known, for certain, tha
t Humphrey must have already heard. Then at last Briers did give a hint, in a singular fashion. He invited Humphrey along to the police station for a morning briefing.

  It bore a family resemblance to others that Humphrey had once attended, back in the Army, and then at the old office. It was not noticeably more exciting. From the window-boxes there was a smell of watered soil. A very young detective sergeant was waiting in the hall, more than ever fitting into the mould of the accomplished aide-de-camp, like so many that Humphrey had had to negotiate with: private secretaries of Ministers and Civil Service eminences, captains at headquarters, unobtrusively more confident than generals sitting round, because they were in the commander’s confidence and the generals weren’t. This young man, educated at an expensive school, was acquiring like other aides-de-camp some of his master’s mannerisms, which didn’t entirely suit him. He led the way into the Murder Room, sweet with early-morning freshness, though there were still more filing cabinets, blackboards, sheaves of notices.

  Humphrey was hoping that Briers would have something to say. He did have something to say, but it didn’t enliven Humphrey. Briers was a good public performer, experienced at keeping up the spirits of his team, which by this time crammed the room. There were jocular exchanges. Briers was experienced in those also. They were not in his style, but he could adapt himself to most kinds of camaraderie, particularly if it protected him from what he didn’t want to say. That didn’t tell Humphrey anything new about Briers. Right at the end, he made a short harangue which sounded as though it were one of his regular exhortations. Briers didn’t have to raise his usual voice to fill that room.

  He was saying: ‘I want another blitz on who was walking about that Saturday night. Oh yes, I know we’ve done that till we’re tired. But there must have been someone walking about. We haven’t tracked the one sighting we really want. And someone else must have seen that young woman. We haven’t got anywhere. I want sightings of anyone between 8 p.m. and 1 a.m., specially anywhere round the mews and in Eccleston Street, as well as the Square. There haven’t been anything like enough sightings so far. You’d think this was the middle of a prairie. I want some more. Most of them will be nonsense. I’ve told you before, I’ll tell you again, I want them. I don’t care if it’s the local parson, or Humphrey Leigh who’s just down there (jocund laughter) or the Lord Chancellor, or three old prime ministers, or’ – he ripped off the names of two star actors, an American diplomat, an ecclesiastical dignitary, all of whom lived in Eaton Square – ‘or the fire brigade. I want them. We’ve got a couple of miserable sightings, and those may be a bit of a break. Now I want another blitz. Detective Superintendent Shingler is in charge. We go for everyone, everyone in the Square and round about. Some of them just must have seen someone. Oh, I know, you’ve bothered them before. A lot of these people are old. You be polite if you can manage it (dutiful laughter). If you can’t be polite I’ll look after you, if you can bring me one good authentic piece of observation.’