A Coat of Varnish

by C. P. Snow

  ‘You’re touching wood.’

  ‘It doesn’t do any harm to touch wood,’ Briers said.

  38

  The following evening, while the second pair of detectives were at work questioning Perryman half a mile away, Kate and Humphrey were sitting on the sofa in his drawing-room. She had recently come up from the kitchen, having cooked him a savoury, now on the little table by his side. It was a comfortable domestic picture, sardonic observers might have said. With changes of menu, it happened most nights of the week.

  Yet in form their relation was unaltered. Kate hadn’t made the break. She worked at her hospital, provided for Monty, then gave Humphrey the attention of the most vigilant of lovers. She wanted to give him pleasure, and got pleasure from doing so. Otherwise she didn’t want anything for herself. Except, as Humphrey told her with the liberty of his kind of love, her own way. For they were living on her terms, not his.

  She couldn’t bring herself to leave Monty – to leave him to his helpless self. She thought she was realistic, more than most. She wasn’t sentimental. But she couldn’t bring herself to make the clean and clinical break. Habit was too strong, maybe. Or the comfort – not so noble as it might have seemed to one who flattered herself more – of having someone who needed to cling.

  It didn’t sound realistic. Yet perhaps it was. Kate had announced to Humphrey that it wasn’t time for the final move. They settled down to go on as they were. She was half-living with him. It was a singular kind of happiness. After all, there were more kinds of happiness than complacent or self-important persons thought. As for Kate, she positively enjoyed the activity and the effort, though sometimes she had daydreams as to where she and Humphrey would live when they were free.

  Did Monty know? He could scarcely have helped knowing, both Kate and Humphrey thought. She didn’t conceal her movements, she didn’t volunteer confessions or explanations, but she wouldn’t lie. Probably, Humphrey suggested to her, Monty both knew and didn’t know, that state in which many existed when living with a suspicion they didn’t want to accept. Knowing and not-knowing: he was being treated just as he had always been, everything in order, kindness, cheerfulness, money coming into the house, all paid for. While he continued with his thoughts. In spite of his superbity, he might possess a kind of self-protective cunning. If he had confronted her, it would mean a chance for her to break for good. So Humphrey thought to himself; but he believed that that view of Monty would still bring her pain.

  That evening, sitting in peace on the sofa, Kate was following another thought of his. She knew that, like the detectives themselves, he was excited about the interrogation. This excitement wasn’t a special compliment to human nature. It was like that which spread round Lady Ashbrook’s acquaintances when they were waiting for news as to whether she was mortally ill. People – it didn’t matter whether they were good-natured within the human limits – felt their pulses beating stronger at the prospect of someone else’s calamity. Yes, Humphrey was as good-natured as most men, Kate thought; she had the best of reasons for realising that. But, loving him, she knew that he was carried away, half-absentminded, by the thought of those interrogations. She knew, too, that he had spoken to Frank Briers that afternoon. She was sure that Humphrey wished he were taking part, and was envious.

  If he had known about the background squad later that night, he might have been more envious. That was the inquest after the second session. Morale was high. It was like being at election headquarters when the swing was beginning to look certain. The well-being was almost palpable; or at least odd pats on shoulders really were so. Briers, lifted with the rest, making up his mind about tactics, had intervals when he could forget other cares.

  Next day the interrogation went according to Briers’ standard routine, using a second couple, in this case Bale and Norman Shingler. By now most of the financial operations were clear enough, or as clear as they were likely to be. They had got no nearer, though, to any admissions about the murder, or even a single fact about the doctor’s whereabouts that night. He had been superior, sarcastic, difficult to trouble, they reported. He had answered just as he had answered Briers the night before. Yes, of course, he could have got into Lady Ashbrook’s house that night. Or any other night. It merely happened that he hadn’t. Yes, of course, he could have got hold of her. Patients were used to their doctor’s attention. It merely happened that he hadn’t. Yes, of course, strangling an old woman would present no problems; any doctor knew that. A doctor might do it more quickly than the average layman. He himself was a competent doctor. It happened that he hadn’t tried.

  It was Norman Shingler, sharp as well as pertinacious, who contrived for a few minutes to make him appear less lofty. Shingler had been pressing questions about the sums transferred in Lady Ashbrook’s lifetime. They were not more than a couple of thousand pounds or so at a time. Piddling sums, considering the precautions and the amount of planning. Yes, you could say that if you wanted, Perryman had replied in his indifferent fashion. Piddling sums like that were a reason for killing her? Shingler was probing. Then suddenly Perryman had lost his temper. Lost it for the first time in the two interrogations. Was that the best they could dig up by way of a reason? Money, money, all they could understand was money.

  ‘What else? You tell us?’ Shingler wasn’t letting go.

  ‘Money, money, you can’t see anything else.’

  ‘Well, then, you tell us what the motive was. You know, do you?’

  Perryman was getting back his control. ‘You don’t know it. I don’t know it. Why should I? But it can’t have been money. That’s all you seem to think of.’

  Shingler couldn’t shake him any more. He had thrown his head back – both Bale and Shingler had been irritated by that mannerism – and regained his contemptuous poise. None of the detectives had been used to interrogating anyone so articulate and so much in command. All four had come to find him not only irritating, but also repellent, quite out of the common. They also felt a kind of forced respect. Later, some of them said that he was a brave man.

  Shingler’s notes on the day’s interrogation were before them on the table. Briers turned again to the record of Perryman’s outburst: ‘Well done, Norman. I want to hear you tell me all about it again.’ He was soaking in what he heard. He asked Bale for anything he had noticed. He confirmed that Shingler had touched a nerve. ‘Well done,’ Briers said. ‘I’ll take that up next time I talk to him.’

  Next time, however, was not next day, as the others took for granted. The others knew that there was a purpose when Briers did the unexpected. Even so, they were astonished when, the following morning, without any explanation, Briers let the doctor go home.

  39

  It might work, Frank Briers told Humphrey, letting Perryman have time to think. By now he must have realised that the police knew a good deal. Even control as armoured as his might wear thinner in solitude. He might think that the police were holding back something that counted.

  ‘I wish we were,’ Briers. ‘That’s our weak spot. We’ll have to get it out of him.’

  He hadn’t talked in confidence to Humphrey for a couple of weeks past, since he and the squad had been formulating their tactics. Now, restless, he wanted to talk. He was forcing himself to be patient. He was starved of action.

  He had telephoned Humphrey at his house, asking him if he were alone. It was a dark November night, not cold, the smell of wood smoke in the air. When Briers arrived in Humphrey’s drawing-room, he gulped down a drink.

  He began, as though in the middle of a conversation which had just been interrupted, why he had broken off the interrogations. ‘I had a hunch that he was getting stuck in, ready to let everything bounce off him. The blame’s on me if I’ve got it wrong.’

  Then after a pause he said: ‘Let him puzzle it out. He thinks he’s cleverer than we are. Let him. Then we get him in again in a couple of weeks. Cat and mouse if you like. It’s not nice, but I’ve done it before. It’s make or break.’
<
br />   He told Humphrey about the results of the first two sessions. Fair enough.

  ‘Your chaps have done a good job over the money business, I should have thought,’ Humphrey said. Enthusiasm wasn’t called for. It was a time for detachment.

  ‘Of course they have.’

  ‘On the murder they haven’t had much in the way of luck, have they? You’d have expected something to come loose, wouldn’t you? And it hasn’t.’

  ‘He’s a bastard, but he’s not an ordinary bastard.’

  ‘If you’re right about him, that’s rather an understatement.’

  ‘I’m right about him. You know that, don’t you?’

  At that moment, Humphrey didn’t reply at once. Briers said: ‘He’s not given an inch, except when he had no option.’

  Humphrey hadn’t often seen the younger man unwilling to keep still; but now Frank Briers got up, stretched, walked down the long room towards the window. From where Humphrey was sitting the panes looked greasy black, opaque. Then Briers said: ‘Plenty of people about. Why the hell weren’t there a few that night? Someone ought to have caught a glimpse of the man.’

  When he got back to his chair, they talked as they had done often enough – Briers obsessive, repeating what they had gone over until they were tired, the missing facts, the facts which would have stopped what Briers called any more chuntering. What clothes had Perryman worn that night? Where were they now? Untraceable. Not a chirp from anyone, not a whisper.

  Other factors didn’t signify so much, but still one ought to know the answers. Who had Perryman used as his courier, collecting the pounds at those hotels? No information, not a sighting.

  Humphrey commented: ‘I suppose you’ve thought about his wife?’

  Briers gave an impatient curse. ‘You’re a hell of a lot of help, aren’t you? You’ve said that before. We’ve got nothing out of her. We’ve gone on at her till we’re sick. I’ve had another go at her myself.’

  ‘Any results?’

  ‘Not a sausage. She’s as cool as he is.’

  ‘Do you think she knows?’

  ‘She might know everything. She might know nothing. She just smiles like a Cheshire cat. Then I suppose she goes off to the RC church round the corner.’

  ‘You’d like to hear the confessional, would you?’

  Briers cursed again. Just then he forgot that he was an enlightened man, and remembered his old grandfather denouncing confession and similar debased Papist practices.

  Humphrey was wondering what kind of marriage the Perrymans’ was. Were they close? Was it a deep marriage, so that the two of them couldn’t help being in complicity?

  He had met Alice Perryman only casually, and had been put off by the complacency of such a faith. But the thought of that marriage diverted him to Briers’. He asked, offhand to disguise the caring, how Betty was.

  ‘Not well.’ Briers’ reply was suddenly bitter. ‘It looks as though that remission has finished.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ The words were lame, unavailing. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘No one knows.’ Frank added: ‘She’s seeing double again. She’s gone lame.’

  ‘She’s having too much to take.’

  ‘She’s never done a scrap of harm to a living soul. Now she’s going to have years of this. And people believe in God’s justice. The insufferable fools.’

  Humphrey hadn’t heard him make that protest before. It was violent, and then quenched as soon as uttered. Briers said, in a subdued tone: ‘She was talking about you a day or two ago. She wished that she could get round just a little.’

  Then Briers got back to business. He had been doing his job, with that wretchedness dragging at him, that home waiting for him, Humphrey thought. The curious thing was, his energy was so strong that no one had noticed.

  Briers was recurring to observations about Perryman and what he had seen in his own interrogations. ‘He’s very hard,’ Briers said, ‘very hard physically. I fancied we could tire him out. But he wasn’t any more tired than I was.’

  Humphrey gave a smile of recognition. He had had to put up with Briers’ feats of endurance.

  ‘He’s very vain,’ Briers went on. Humphrey nodded.

  ‘Some of our regular villains are very vain,’ Briers said. ‘But I think he’s the vainest man I’ve ever had the other side of the table.’

  Humphrey said: ‘I think I’d go a bit farther. There’s an old quality people used to talk about – they called it arrogance of soul. I should think he’d get high marks for that.’ He made a faint smile. ‘It’s a curious quality. I met a couple of war heroes, genuine heroes who had it, pressed down and running over. I fancy some of the most spectacular martyrs had it, too. It’s what puzzled me most about Perryman when I used to meet him–’

  ‘I don’t want to run across it again, for God’s sake. I’ll sacrifice the war heroes and the martyrs if we can get rid of the Perrymans.’

  ‘It takes some people above themselves. It gives them the guts to die in torture. It takes other people below themselves; then they can kill in torture.’

  As Humphrey finished, he regarded the other man. Between the two of them they had seen a fair amount of what human beings could do. It wasn’t so long ago, in this same room, Briers had wondered how much of it ought to be public knowledge. He took it less clinically than Humphrey did himself. ‘Anyway,’ Humphrey went on, ‘it gives you an opening. Anyone as arrogant as that isn’t going to guard every spot. You’ve got somewhere near, haven’t you? That young man of yours – what’s his name–’

  ‘Shingler.’

  ‘Shingler – he got nearer. Perhaps he was lucky. You’ll work on that again, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  As they had once done, they were talking like fellow professionals.

  ‘Money,’ Briers was saying. ‘They say he was furious at the bare suggestion. Shingler didn’t even tell him that he had killed for money. But the faintest idea of it was outrageous. Too lofty for such things, this one is. I’ll try it out all the ways I can think of. I’ll have Shingler with me just to remind him of the last occasion. There’s a hope that he’ll come out with another motive. If we upset him enough.’ Briers went on: ‘You know, I can just imagine a man like him, wanting to do something on the grand scale. Anything goes. What’s to stop a man who knows he’s ten times brighter than the rest of us? And cooler. Surrounded by dull brutes, cattle. Anything goes. That would be something to do.’

  Briers paused and then broke out: ‘Can you imagine that?’

  ‘Not as well as you can.’

  ‘I rather doubt whether I could feel like that myself,’ Briers said as though braving the other’s sarcasm. ‘But I can imagine this man feeling something like it.’

  ‘Yes, I know you can.’ Humphrey’s previous remark might have sounded like a gibe, but this was meant. He was referring to Briers’ great gift as an interrogator. He immersed himself in the human being opposite. He wasn’t just questioning, he was feeling with him. It was a curious gift. If you didn’t possess it, you could never learn it. Humphrey didn’t possess it, or to anything like the same degree. Once or twice he had reproached himself for not being able to enter Tom Thirkill’s paranoia. Briers could have done. He had what they now called empathy. When they had worked together, Humphrey, if he wanted to cheer himself up among pompous persons, reflected that though he hadn’t Frank Briers’ empathy he himself might have the clearer insight. Know-alls, meeting the two of them, would have confidently assumed the precise opposite in both respects.

  ‘Another gambit you might try,’ Humphrey said. ‘Remember the old lady thought she might be dying of cancer. This was her doctor. It’s long odds there was an understanding.’ Humphrey was recalling a conversation in the Square garden. ‘It would be surprising if she didn’t trust him to put her out quietly – if she couldn’t bear it any longer. She would be in his power. It must have been a dislocation when he heard she was healthy, no cancer, no need of trusted doctor. No more powe
r.’

  ‘Noted.’ Briers was as ready to listen as when he was much younger. He wanted to stay there, so it seemed, talking to Humphrey. He blamed himself for taking so long to see that Perryman was different from the others. He ought to have identified him from the start. It’s no use jobbing, though, he said, and went on doing so. When once he had picked out Perryman, then they hadn’t gone far wrong. It’s not been an easy one, he said. He took another drink, breaking his own discipline. He had nothing to occupy him that night. He would have been glad of any sort of action, Humphrey felt: it would shut out imaginings about his wife. It was ungrateful, Humphrey also felt, that he himself, happy with Kate, nothing to be anxious about her in her health, would still have been glad of some sort of action, too.

  Briers was saying that some of the detective work had been ‘bright enough’. He was proud of his lads. The pride was genuine – but this was something else to talk about. That financial fiddling, it had taken digging into. That was what they were paid for. It wasn’t earth-shaking, but it was good work.

  Suddenly, without connection, Humphrey broke in. He had his deprecating smile. He said: ‘I think I’d better tell you.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I was wrong to have any doubts. You were right about Perryman.’

  Briers’ eyes lit up, but he replied in a matter-of-fact tone, without triumph or conceit: ‘Oh yes, I was. Mind you, I’ve been wrong two or three times already in this business. The score-sheet isn’t all that pretty.’