by C. P. Snow
‘I’ve seen people do all manner of things for less.’
‘Oh, drop your reminiscences.’ Then she said she was sorry. Her skin was flushed, eyes brilliant, temper lost. She could be a spitfire with others, not with him, except to provoke, which she wasn’t doing now.
‘Do you honestly believe that this man – you know him, so do I – did all this just for that?’
‘Perhaps neither of us know him.’
‘You do believe he did all this.’
‘I’d prefer not to.’
She was brooding. In a practical fashion, she suddenly said that the evidence sounded weak. Wouldn’t the case be difficult to prove? Humphrey said that he had said as much to Briers, almost in the same words. Perhaps that would make them wait until something more had broken. Perhaps that was why he had been sworn to secrecy.
They were hankering to go to bed. They then thought again. It might have left a chagrin or the sadness of the flesh, which neither of them was used to feeling, nor wanted to risk that night.
35
Humphrey was sitting in Frank Briers’ office in Scotland Yard, waiting for him to return. This was the latest Scotland Yard, the office block in Victoria Street. Indistinguishable from other office blocks, nothing like so picturesque – Humphrey thought, who was old enough to be disaffected by change – as the good old building down by the Embankment, still called in the English style New Scotland Yard. Humphrey walked over to the window. This room was on the top floor (fourteenth storey), what in an apartment block would have been the penthouse. Down below was the lighted snake of Victoria Street. Humphrey, disaffected again, thought that was indistinguishable from other streets, in any big city anywhere. He could get a glimpse of Big Ben, which was rather more appealing. It was nearly nine o’clock at night, since Briers and his colleagues worked late hours. Under the clouds, beyond the river, there swirled the russet-lurid glow of London. All towns had their nightly luminescence, but to Humphrey London’s seemed further to the red end of the spectrum than any other.
Quick steps outside. As Briers came in, he was saying: ‘Sorry to keep you.’
‘Gone all right?’
Briers had been explaining to his superiors what he intended to do. He had a good tactical sense. It was as well to be insured if things went wrong and, if they went right, superiors felt they had earned a share of the credit.
‘Quite all right.’ Briers was terse, cheerful, intense with action.
Humphrey didn’t take the initiative. Briers had asked for him presumably to tell him the programme. That, however, Humphrey as good as already knew, after the talk of the previous week. Now it was all worked out, Humphrey couldn’t be any further use, not that he had been much effective use before.
Humphrey observed, like a friendly visitor: ‘Grand office you’ve got here, haven’t you?’
This was the first time Humphrey had seen it. Yes, it was a sumptuous office, by London official standards, something like what would have been prescribed for a high civil servant, carpet, sofa surrounded by easy chairs, suitable for informal meetings, long table surrounded by hard chairs, suitable for formal meetings, drinks cupboard, private lavatory.
‘A bit above my rank.’ Briers thrust out his underlip. ‘As I told you – didn’t I? – the previous occupant is being entertained by Her Majesty.’ Gallows gibe, meaning prison. ‘Still, I might get a step up before too long. So I gather. Unless I blot my copybook.’
Briers was being calmly realistic about his career. Shortly afterwards, he proceeded to be calmly realistic about the case. He had been conferring with the lads. It was a time to get morale steady, expectations not too high, not too low. Public grumbles were needling away. Some newspapers didn’t leave them alone for long. Nor did some MPs. A handful of Tories talking of law and order, a couple of left-wingers who proclaimed that upper-class persons (pointing towards Loseby but not naming him) were being protected.
‘God help us,’ Briers remarked, as he thought of those politicians with the only stab of venom he showed that night. He stabilised himself. ‘That’s neither here nor there,’ he said. ‘But, other things being equal, it might be just as well to show a bit of our hand.’
‘Are other things equal?’ Humphrey was thinking, his old job had almost all conceivable disadvantages, but, since no one knew what they were doing, there had been one advantage. His name hadn’t been mentioned in the Press or the Commons once in his official life.
Briers said that with the evidence now in hand they couldn’t bring a charge against the doctor. All his team agreed. So did the high-ups downstairs. He pointed at the floor, but as though he had the direction wrong, and was speaking of elevated beings. Further, they all agreed that there was no serious chance of decisive evidence coming nearer. They might extract more details of the fund from New York. That would prove nothing. They could have a streak of random luck. It sometimes happened, but it was no use reckoning on that. There was only one thing for it. They had to make a direct attack on Perryman himself.
They couldn’t charge him, but he could help them with their enquiries. Briers used the sanctimonious phrase with a grin. When he was a young man, he had often heard Humphrey say that modern English consisted of taking the meaning out of words.
He maintained his mordant grin. ‘Sometimes they help us quite a lot, you know.’
Then he said: ‘You see, it’s the only way, isn’t it?’
‘So it seems.’
‘We know a lot now that he doesn’t realise we know. We can give him a thorough going-over. It may take some time. It’s the only way.’
‘I dare say.’
Briers was talking like a detective immersed in the job and nothing else, but he was also being considerate to his friend. He believed that Humphrey still had his reserves. Briers wouldn’t press him to agree, or even to disagree. It was better to leave it. Humphrey understood. But he was also beginning to understand why Briers had wished for his company that night.
‘There’s one question left,’ said Briers. ‘When? When do we do it?’
‘I need hardly tell you,’ Briers went on, smile truculent, combative, ‘that there have been differences of opinion. Among the lads, I mean. Now or later. That’s the alternative. Some of them want to wait for something to turn up. It’s only a chance in hell, they say, but it’s worth waiting for. Old Len Bale has been sitting on his hands on that side. He’s a bit of an old auntie in some respects. Not all.’ Briers seemed to be feeling surreptitious amusement, for reasons not disclosed to Humphrey. ‘But some of them want to jump in straight away. The argument is, we’ll get him by surprise. He might be thinking he’s home and dry and we’re not giving him a thought. He can’t have any idea what we’ve thought out. He doesn’t even know we’ve been busy with Loseby and that girl. Loseby hasn’t been in touch, we know that. We don’t think he ever was. Anyway, nowadays Loseby and his wife are thinking of their own precious skins. She doesn’t think of much else, that one.’
Briers made some observation about Susan. Then, back to order, he said: ‘The argument against, against going in now, that’s straightforward. If it goes off half-cock, then he’d be prepared next time. Now we’re in the driver’s seat, we ought to know enough to break him down. If we muck it up, then we’ve thrown the advantage away.’
There was no tension in the room. This was a witness of friendship, of the old friendship quite restored. Humphrey knew, though, with detached amusement, that it was something more. He was serving a purpose. Briers needed someone, outside the machine, who had nothing to gain, on whom he could try out the arguments and the doubts. Humphrey had seen something of men of action in his time. When they were making a decision, they needed someone who would listen, not persuade them, not disturb them. It was the reason for the mysterious cronies whom prime ministers relied on. As a rule, they were anonymous figures. The Civil Service used to have a name for them – the top man’s sounding-board.
‘Well,’ Humphrey said without expression, ‘w
hich side are you coming down on?’
‘Do you have to ask?’ Humphrey gave the twitch of a smile.
‘I think not. No, we go straight in. It’s a bit of a risk, of course. But the pros are stronger than the cons. That settles it.’
Briers spoke like one weighing his judgment, but he had made the decision days before.
He asked another question: ‘By the by, what do you think the chances are? I mean, will the man give?’
Humphrey was certain that his answer would affect nothing. He could indulge in some detached reflection. They both knew, he said, if you had seen something of people, that some responses you could foresee. But two you couldn’t – at least, Humphrey had never met anyone who could. One was physical courage. No one had been able to predict that. The other, and it wasn’t the same, was resistance to breaking strain. He wouldn’t have put a penny on his own guesses. Perhaps he might have said that anyone like the young woman Susan, soft and unresisting on the surface, viscous tough underneath, would survive most interrogations. Perhaps harder and more brittle natures were more likely to crack. That might be true with the doctor. ‘I wouldn’t like to bet on it, I’m telling you. But I should have thought there was a chance.’
‘Fair enough.’ Briers had listened with friendly attention, nothing more.
He returned to his calm realistic assessment: ‘I’ve told the lads, of course, that they must be ready for a disappointment. We haven’t too much going for us. We may be left flat on our faces. I have reminded them of the times when we were just as positive, and the man went away laughing at us, and is still scot-free.’
Briers continued about his warnings against excessive hope. He had issued them, Humphrey had no doubt. Briers had a realistic mind. He had suffered his failures. And yet he was warning himself more than anyone else. Humphrey, who had thought earlier of the habits of prime ministers, was reminded of another one. He thought of Churchill before the desert campaigns, solemnly warning the nation that nothing was certain in war, and that no one could promise victory. The trouble was, no one believed it, because he didn’t himself. The message was sober, the tone was not. Briers could have given his colleagues all the professional cautions in existence, and they would have felt that he was confident; and they would have been right.
Part Four
36
It was all scrupulously polite in the back room of the police station. This was where Briers’ inner squad had conferred on their first afternoon and often since. Now it was being used for questioning, or what a less delicate observer might have called interrogation. On one side of the table there were Briers himself and Inspector Flamson; on the other Dr Perryman.
It would have been difficult for an outsider to be certain which way the initiative was going. It might not be easy for the insiders. Perryman had been brought into the station just after 5.30 in the evening and the process had started at 6 p.m. It had not been an arrest, for, as Briers had told Humphrey, they had nothing like enough to make a charge. A couple of the team had been sent round to the doctor’s house with a quiet request: there were some things to clear up; yes, perhaps he had better bring a suitcase – it might take a little time. The sergeant in charge reported that Perryman seemed prepared. He was careful and slow in his movements, as though conscious of his own breathing. He made some sort of joke. He had plenty of patients in Belgravia, he said, but this would be the first time he had ever slept there. The policemen didn’t see any distinction between Blomfield Terrace and Belgravia and didn’t respond.
Briers listened. That manner of Perryman’s told him nothing he didn’t already know: the man was cool, assertive, in command of himself. So were many men in trouble. It was no guide either to guilt or innocence, just to temperament. Briers had interviewed a good many men, completely innocent, who at the first prick of suspicion went in for bravado. He had done so himself, when once he had been the subject of a police enquiry. If he had ever believed the conventional wisdom about human behaviour, he didn’t now.
There weren’t any shorthand answers. It wasn’t in his mind that night, but he was apt to tell his young men about the silliness of shorthand answers. Bullies were not always cowards: rather more often than not, the reverse was true.
Perryman had not asked to speak to his solicitor. Both he and Briers knew that the detective had a card to play. If Perryman didn’t want to help the police, he might prefer to help the income tax authorities. Those simple transactions about Lady Ashbrook’s medical payments were docketed in the files. That would be enough for the present.
Days before deciding to fetch Perryman in, Briers had concluded that Perryman would be thinking much as he did himself. Just to make sure he began the evening with some thoughtful questions about Lady Ashbrook’s standard of living.
‘We are rather interested, you know,’ said Briers.
‘What is the problem, Chief Superintendent?’ said Perryman, in a similar, thoughtful, unexcited tone.
‘Well, it is a bit of a puzzle, how she managed to live on her income. That is, on the income she returned to the Revenue?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know enough of the details. I wish I could help.’
‘It would be very valuable if you could help, of course.’
‘I’m sure you realise’ – Perryman’s lustrous eyes were gazing straight into Briers’ fine acute ones – ‘that she did live very economically. As her medical adviser, I often told her that it was time at her age to have someone permanently in the house.’
‘That was very sensible advice, you know. But we still don’t quite understand how she managed. It was an expensive house to keep up, wasn’t it? You must have thought so yourself.’
There followed a knowledgeable discussion of the minimum outgoings on Lady Ashbrook’s house. It might have sounded like an exercise in domestic science, all of them earnest seekers after a balanced budget. It was something like a parody of other discussions in that room, when the detectives first tried to make sense of Lady Ashbrook’s finances.
Flamson, who had been taking notes and who continued to do so, began to have a speaking part. Briers asked him questions, inviting Perryman to do the same, saying – what was true – that Flamson would have made a good businessman. To himself, looking at his junior, Briers thought he would have made a better businessman than detective. He sat there, solid, fleshy, with heavy eyelids and underlids, shrewd and self-indulgent. He was shrewd enough, but not committed enough, maybe. But he hadn’t been a bad pick of Briers’. After all, it was he who had first disbelieved in Lady Ashbrook’s will. He might be slow, but somehow he had lumbered on to the right track.
Now he was testing Perryman about Lady Ashbrook’s expenses. ‘They didn’t fit,’ he said, with a slumbrous accountant’s pleasure. ‘They can’t have fitted.’ This again was a recapitulation of what the police had long since seen. Flamson brought out the facts as, weeks before, he had done to his colleagues.
Briers intervened. ‘You were familiar, weren’t you, with her habit of paying bills in ordinary notes? Not cheques. She even paid some of her major bills that way. That was a curious habit, shouldn’t you say?’
Perryman gave a companionable, superior smile, the smile which Kate had once found attractive.
‘You must live in a very sheltered world, Chief Superintendent.’
They were all three speaking in even tones, more like a conversation than a detective enquiry. This was Briers’ style. He wouldn’t change if he didn’t get his results that night. He didn’t believe, any more than he did in other conventional wisdom, cherished by outsiders, in a soft-hard series of sessions with his suspects. That wasn’t for professionals. The professional method for an interrogation was simpler than the conventional wisdom thought. It was just to be oneself. Interrogators weren’t clever enough, nor was anyone else, to put on an act for long. If the man on the other side tried it, so much the worse for him.
There were, of course, one or two techniques. One was to hold a fact in reserve, and
spring it as a surprise: That was something you could teach. Another, much harder to teach, was to know when to change one’s pace. A good interrogator did that as it were by nature, and only another good interrogator would recognise the art; just as only a good interrogator would recognise the quiver of the nerve ends which another showed.
They had been at it for an hour. Repetitively, Flamson had been going over the puzzles of Lady Ashbrook’s income. There was much repetition in any process like theirs, which was why tapings of interrogations were among the most tedious records ever made. A young woman constable – who, though it wasn’t Flamson who was the happy adulterer in Briers’ squad, made his eyes light up underneath the padded flesh – entered with three cups of tea. The tea was very weak and very milky. Briers, who had smoked half a dozen cigarettes in the first hour, lit another.
‘You might care to know,’ he said, casually, offhand, as though he were mentioning that the BBC television news that night would be twenty minutes later than usual, ‘that we have information which you could be interested in. About a source of money for Lady Ashbrook. You know. The American fund, the Comptroller Fund.’
‘The Comptroller Fund?’ Perryman said, without expression or concern.
‘You know. Money came over at intervals. Reached someone here in English currency. Went to pay those bills.’
‘That’s interesting,’ said Perryman, as though nothing could be less so.
‘And this has been going on after her death.’
‘Has it now?’
‘Yes, it has. The fund has gone on operating. A sizeable sum – we don’t know the exact amount, let’s say a thousand pounds – has been passed to Lord Loseby.’ Briers didn’t change his tone. ‘Our information is, passed by you, Doctor.’
Perryman’s face had gone smooth, youthful, for a moment transformed by shock. For a moment he didn’t utter. Then he began to sound harsh and haughty.