A Coat of Varnish

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A Coat of Varnish Page 21

by C. P. Snow


  If there was a difference, it was because Betty was an admirable cook. She hadn’t forgotten meals that Humphrey seemed to like. It occurred to him as odd that he, to whom food didn’t matter much, take it or leave it, should be presented with meals he enjoyed twice in the last few nights, at White’s and here. There wasn’t much to be said for the English cuisine, but a few dishes were good, and he seemed to be having them all. Betty had made a steak and kidney pudding and a lavish trifle. Too much trouble for anyone in her state. But when she had been half-paralysed she had got round on her knees to make meals for Frank.

  Over the meal, Betty asked about Humphrey’s children, calling them by their names affectionately, though she knew them only slightly. She was made to be a mother, Humphrey thought, and as a result his reply was unaccountably brusque.

  ‘Nothing much to report. I’m not much in contact with them. They’re still trying to do good.’

  She smiled at him, still affectionate. ‘You oughtn’t to say that now, ought you?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ he replied.

  ‘Why do you pretend to be harder than you are? You wouldn’t really prefer it if they were trying to do bad, would you?’

  ‘Sometimes I’m not so sure,’ Humphrey said, with a throw-away sarcastic smile.

  ‘Now, now. You’re a good man, we all know you are.’

  ‘My dear girl, I wish you knew–’

  ‘Good people are very wrong to be superior about do-gooders. We need all the do-gooders we can get.’

  Frank was wearing a tough husbandly grin. Maybe he had met some such outburst himself. At the moment, he was smiling because, though he was used to hearing younger women get spirited with Humphrey, he had never noticed one of them lecture him so naturally.

  When the steak pudding was finished, Frank remarked: ‘It’s time we did some talking. You have to sing for your supper, of course. Fill your glass up. First of all, you say anything you want, anything about anyone on earth, in front of Betty. You know that. She’s much more discreet than I am. To tell you the honest truth, I had to learn to be discreet. When I started my tongue was ready to run away with me. I wanted to impress. I had to learn the hard way.’

  ‘I think that was the case with me.’

  ‘It wasn’t with Betty.’ Frank gazed at his wife with an expression protective, admiring, desirous, teasing, anxious. ‘She’s never given away a secret in her life. I sometimes think intelligent women are much better at keeping their mouths shut than intelligent men. Perhaps they don’t seem to have so many temptations.’

  Humphrey nodded. He had made the same discovery.

  ‘Well, you can say anything you like. I’m going to ask you something. You’ll have to come clean. I can’t talk – we’ve been trying to be too bloody clever with each other. To hell with that. I want to ask you what your old office can tell us about Tom Thirkill. I know they keep tabs on him and more politicians than one would like to mention–’

  ‘They have to look as though they’re earning their money, don’t they?’

  Humphrey knew that, out of the ingrown habit, now almost an instinct, he was being evasive. Frank knew it. Soon he began to speak.

  ‘Not good enough. Come clean. They’ve been watching Thirkill, as you might expect. Then I found they’d taken off our Special Branch people in favour of your old lot. You tell me why. I don’t need telling that Tom Thirkill is about as likely to defect as the Chairman of the Midland Bank. I do need telling what they have on Tom Thirkill’s movements. Nothing fancy. I very strongly suspect that they can tell us where Tom Thirkill was that Saturday night. We haven’t picked up any sightings. I believe your people could tell us. What do you think?’

  Humphrey regarded him without expression, still in the old mode of duty, and then a smile twitched.

  ‘I should think that is distinctly likely.’

  ‘Well, then. Can you find out?’

  ‘I don’t much like to. I suppose I could.’

  ‘What the hell’s the use of having all the contacts in London unless you come to the rescue now and then?’

  Betty said: ‘That’s the trouble, isn’t it? He hates pulling rank, don’t you, Humphrey?’

  Humphrey said: ‘I must say, I don’t see the point. Why in God’s name are you thinking of Thirkill? Yes, I’ve given him some thought myself, but it doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t make sense.’ Frank was in his most active mood. ‘Nothing makes much sense. I’ve told you before, this is a policeman’s nightmare. Non-co-operative upper classes. No motive that anyone can see. If you want to get away with murder, Humphrey, kill someone amongst your smartest friends and, just to be on the safe side, kill someone you don’t know. And don’t have any motive at all. Then I promise you that we shan’t catch you.’

  Betty smiled. Humphrey wondered how long it had taken her to get acclimatised to Frank’s gallows jokes.

  ‘Well,’ Frank said, ‘we can tot up our own score. Getting down to cases. Burglars, minor villains, professionals – drawn blank. But that was never really on, you know that as well as I do. Odd stranger, madman, hooligan – “impossible” is a big word, but as near impossible as makes no matter. So we’re left with the old three-card trick – pick someone among those who knew the old lady. You said, more than three to pick on. We’re still casting round. But that’s just for the sake of thoroughness. Unless I’ve gone off my head, it must be someone I’ve thought of already. And the same with you. I can’t dream up a conceivable motive for Tom Thirkill. But when one’s really up against it it’s an old tip: Don’t forget the oddest man around. Even if you can’t see the faintest reasons. Tom Thirkill is odd enough for anyone’s money. So I want to know about him. By the way, he keeps some of his movements remarkably dark.’

  That night, both he and Humphrey were missing an explanation which later appeared obvious enough. Humphrey asked: ‘Is he worth all this trouble, as far as you’re concerned?’

  Briers said: ‘As a matter of fact, there’s a different reason for being interested. You can guess, it’s a better one. He must know something about his daughter. She’s been on the list all along – you took that for granted, too. Wild as they come. Not exactly nice. The old lady was pretty effectively stopping her grabbing our friend Loseby. I don’t believe anyone half-way sane is going to kill for that reason. But, still, I’m not going to rule her out. There may be something simpler that we haven’t latched on to. With her and Loseby. Why in Christ’s name did he marry her? I want to know anything her father knows.’

  Humphrey nodded and said: ‘I don’t think you’re surprising me.’

  ‘Of course I’m not. It’s all commonplace. Loseby’s in the picture, but I still can’t see why. Anyway, the boys are on the job. They’re working on how he lived, money-wise. And that night was he shacked up with the young man Douglas Gimson, or was he not? You’ve come a lot cleaner with me about your sources; I’ll do the same about ours.’ He looked at his wife with consideration, or respect, or a kind of apology. ‘You’ve been through it before, dear, haven’t you? You know in this game you don’t trust your best friend. Humphrey’s one of our best friends, isn’t he?’

  ‘I’d trust him with your life,’ she said. She loved Frank, and she meant it.

  ‘So would I,’ Frank said, and then added with a professional grin. ‘That doesn’t mean I always find it easy to trust him with some of our little ways. We don’t like giving them away. Any more than he did, I hope you noticed. More often than not, our sources are nothing to be proud of. I doubt if his are, either. That’s how the job has to be done. Well, we’ve been driving on in the old groove. It hasn’t paid off so far. But we have plenty of feeds in the homosexual world. Not as many as we used to have now the law is changed.’

  ‘That was something anyway,’ Betty put in, with gentle but surprising firmness.

  ‘Not so much for us,’ Frank said. ‘Of course, our boys are digging into it now. Not on young Loseby much. He wouldn’t pick up worki
ng-class boys or layabouts. We haven’t heard a whisper of that, but Douglas Gimson might. We’re getting a few scraps of hard information.’

  ‘Three names on the list,’ said Humphrey. ‘Others? Perhaps that doctor, Perryman. I haven’t any idea why, but he was with her often enough.’

  ‘Not forgotten. There was that little lead. Didn’t come to anything. But there were those money dealings. That got us nowhere, but we haven’t forgotten. By the way, he’s the only one of them who hasn’t put up any cover for that night. Just dinner with his wife, and a patient to see. He doesn’t pretend that he has any cover at all.’

  Humphrey said: ‘That sounds more sensible than most of them.’

  ‘That was our feeling, too.’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘Do you know anything about Paul Mason? His girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend, so they say, had more access to the old lady than anyone else. She’s got perfect cover, though, like your Kate.’

  Humphrey said: ‘I just can’t take that seriously.’

  ‘In this state of things you can take anything seriously.’

  Humphrey understood.

  The concept of Paul Mason was dismissed. It had been half-facetious. It wasn’t what Betty expected, though she had heard this kind of sombre conversation before, but the two of them became more facetious. Lefroy? After all, Lady Ashbrook didn’t recognise his genius. Alec Luria? The local parson? Betty hadn’t had any previous sign that Humphrey’s psychological taste could break down, and he was not only put off, but shocked. She broke out in an invalid’s freedom, for the first time that night: ‘Don’t you wish sometimes you had done something different?’ She was speaking to Humphrey, but against her own will to her husband, too.

  ‘Who hasn’t?’

  ‘I mean, wouldn’t you have liked to have done something positive sometimes?’

  ‘Some real concrete good, you mean?’ Humphrey turned the question, with an affectionate gaze. ‘Most of us are lucky if we manage not to do real concrete harm.’

  ‘Oh really, I told you before tonight that’s not good enough for you.’

  At the mention of Luria, Frank had been reminded of his phrase about varnish, which he had heard from Humphrey, and spoke to his wife with a kind of pleading, with watchfulness about her nervous movements, and perhaps in an attempt to avert the disapproval of love.

  ‘Don’t be too finicky, my dearest. Everything you want is very fine and anyone who’s worth anything wants it. But it’s very fragile, and it could break up very quickly. I wish to God you’d open your eyes to that. You’ve heard of old Luria’s coat of varnish, haven’t you? You know, that varnish is bloody thin. Humphrey and I have spent a lot of our time trying to make it an inch or two thicker in places. That’s all. Whether it’s worth anyone’s doing or not is anyone’s guess. If I didn’t think it worth doing, I shouldn’t do it. You know that.’

  ‘Of course I know that,’ she said. She said it with a radiant smile on the fine-drawn face. She went on: ‘But I do wish you two thought better of what people could become.’

  The two men smiled at her, and glanced at each other.

  26

  Although Humphrey and Frank Briers hadn’t appeared to clinch a bargain, they had done so, as Betty had also understood, that evening in her house. As the first sign of it Humphrey was to explain what his old office had been doing about Tom Thirkill.

  He found the need for this mysterious. As Frank had said, it was the Special Branch, the small section of the police detailed for security work, who normally were used for a job of surveillance on politicians. Himself, he had worked with them often enough. But it seemed they had been warned off. He could see no meaning there. Further, he didn’t like the enquiry which Frank Briers had pressed upon him.

  It wasn’t going to be congenial. Few people were more extinct than an extinct official; and that was specially true when one had been in the top stratum of a security service. An extinct official knew too much; what was worse, he knew the questions to ask, as well, or better, than the present officials did. They would know the way to avoid answering them as well, though not better than he did himself. He went to his old familiar office, still mysteriously smelling of sawdust. He made visits to his old colleagues. He had to call on his former chief, still in post, but just about to retire, before he could get a straight answer to a single question.

  His old boss’ name was Higgs. He was a plump cautious bright-eyed man, once a classical don, who had retained a hobby for non-Indo-European languages – Finnish, Estonian. He looked less like a security officer than Humphrey himself. But he had a total addiction to his work. Unlike Humphrey and most of the other operators, he hadn’t started as a member of the impoverished upper classes. His father had been a small shop-keeper, and he had made his way through his academic skills. Between him and Humphrey there had long existed a feeling not uncommon among colleagues at their level in a hierarchy, perhaps even stronger in this closed system – not exactly liking, not exactly dislike, but something of the nature of guarded intimate knowledgeable suspiciousness, such as you can sometimes meet in secretive families.

  Humphrey didn’t spend much time on preambles. Had they been tapping Thirkill’s calls?

  ‘What do you think?’ said Humphrey’s old chief.

  ‘I think you have been.’

  ‘It’s not for me to say you’re not right.’

  ‘Am I right?’

  ‘Of course you are.’

  ‘The only thing I can’t understand,’ Humphrey said, ‘is what in the name of reason do you think you’re playing at?’

  This was an old quarrel. Higgs was a very clever man, he did his duty, he kept his opinions to himself. Yet Humphrey knew that he had the political instinct of some of the last Tsar’s less liberal counsellors. Anyone who was not demonstrably on the right was on the left. Anyone on the left was automatically suspect. Thirkill was potentially a man of power, and so he was more suspect.

  Humphrey shook his head. There was no use talking about it; there never had been any use. And yet Higgs was smiling with obscure satisfaction, as though he was allowing Humphrey to waste his energy.

  ‘What have you got out of it?’ he said.

  ‘Do you mind telling me why you are interested, Humph?’

  Sir Eric Higgs was the only person alive who used that diminutive.

  ‘You’ve heard of the Belgravia murder? Old Lady Ashbrook?’

  Sir Eric had heard, though not in his professional job, of most murders. He was an amateur of crime. He was very quick to pick up references, forgot nothing, knew of Humphrey’s former connection with the police. Maybe he could even have recaptured Briers’ name. No further explanations were necessary, after Humphrey said he would like any data they had on Thirkill’s whereabouts on 24/25 July. Higgs gave a plump cunning grin.

  ‘Oh, you’re on the wrong track there, you know. We’ve had some curious instructions from on high. I’m not permitted to tell you the reason. It’s nothing to do with what you were thinking a moment ago. Thirkill’s by way of being valuable just now in high quarters.’

  ‘Well, then, what were you really playing at? What was the man doing?’

  ‘I’m inclined to think,’ Sir Eric said, ‘we ought to do what we can to help. But I don’t think it will be much use for your purposes.’

  Those would have been something like the correct ceremonies, even if Humphrey had still been one of the inner circle.

  ‘What have you got out of the telephone calls?’ Humphrey repeated.

  ‘Very little. Precious little.’ Immediately, Sir Eric became precise, businesslike, exhibiting a memory as automatic as Frank Briers’, better than Humphrey’s, which was good enough. Humphrey didn’t doubt that in detail he would tell the truth.

  The truth was, however, not sensational. On the tapes, Tom Thirkill was recorded as talking to three or four Moscow Marxists in the parliamentary party – just general bonhomie, asking them not to stab him in the back more than necessary. Inter
esting that he didn’t talk in the same terms to the much larger group of the militant left, irregular Trotskyists. Not disciplined, Humphrey commented. Thirkill wouldn’t trust them; no experienced politician would. Humphrey added: ‘Of course, the man’s fighting for his political life.’

  Sir Eric was not concerned about party factions. There was nothing that disturbed him on those tapes. Anyway, Thirkill was in favour in the highest places, for reasons which he still couldn’t tell Humphrey. The curious thing was, he was not dissembling, Humphrey had to realise. If high authority had a use for Thirkill, so automatically had Higgs.

  ‘Of course,’ Higgs said with avuncular caution, ‘we’re dealing with a remarkably cagey man.’

  Humphrey was impelled to remark: ‘I’m glad you’ve stopped worrying about him–’

  ‘We’ve said that before, haven’t we? And it turned out rather uncomfortably different.’

  Bland, obstinate as ever, but Humphrey had to accept that this was the mirror image of himself and Frank Briers. Brilliant suspiciousness through living at the centre of a spider’s web, feeling the twitches, losing one’s sense of the impossible.

  Sir Eric remarked with subdued pleasure: ‘He really is remarkably cagey, you know. We have some evidence that he won’t talk about anything serious in his own drawing-room.’

  ‘He thinks you’ve bugged it?’

  ‘So it would appear.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, have you?’

  Sir Eric gave a chairman-like smile. ‘No, we haven’t gone as far as that.’

  He knew nothing of Thirkill’s daughter, and there was nothing about her on the file. But he did as he promised. Yes, there had been a check on Thirkill’s movements, which had continued up to the present day, on those same unproducible instructions. He would let Humphrey read the record of the night of 24 July. It was several steps down the hierarchy, in a small gloomy windowless room, taken there by Sir Eric, who politely introduced Humphrey to the incumbent, whom he already knew quite well, that Humphrey saw the papers. By that time Sir Eric had said goodbye.

 

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