by C. P. Snow
Perryman didn’t protest or deny. He didn’t speak at all. In the past few minutes, he had been sitting slackly, half-slumped. He was looking, not at Briers but at the table, and anyone entering the room, not aware of what had been happening, might have thought that he appeared, not distressed, but something like amused and confidential. That was the moment, Briers said later, when he was sure that Perryman had resigned. Perhaps with the kind of surrender that Briers had seen often enough in other suspects, but this time there was another aura, too, as though the man hadn’t been beaten down, but persuaded, even wooed, arrogance untouched, perhaps enhanced.
Shingler afterwards gave a different account from Briers’. He hadn’t Briers’ candour. He said that, on the spot, he didn’t believe that this was the breaking-point. He did admit that he had been certain that something decisive would happen soon.
Briers went on: ‘There’s just one other matter. I’ve not been able to make up my mind. Perhaps you can’t, either. After you had killed her, and that wasn’t much trouble, naturally, then you went upstairs for a good long stay. Very bright. You must have worked out that we should wear ourselves into the ground, trying to pick up sightings, just after the murder. You were quite right. That is exactly what we did. We must have located every human being who was in the locality between 9 p.m. and midnight. Meanwhile, you were sitting in her bedroom. But before you went up there, after she was quite dead, you smashed her skull in. I’ve asked you before. Why?’
Perryman’s body was still slack, mouth still half-smiling.
‘I suppose,’ said Briers, ‘you might have thought it would lead us up the garden path. Looking for villains or any sort of scum. I told you in that case you underestimated us. We had to go through the motions, because anything can happen in this business, but it didn’t take us in for half an hour. But I’ve never been convinced that was really why you had to belt in her head. I think you lost your own. I think you were just the same as all those others. You’re not as unique as you’d like to be. You might have reckoned on that, Doctor. Of course, you recovered yourself very quickly. Then you left the body and you went upstairs.’ Briers went on. ‘You’d been very lucky. I expect you know that. Blood. Whether you had made preparations – we haven’t found anything on your clothes yet. We don’t know whether you changed or where. We don’t know exactly how long you stayed upstairs. Our guess is that you left when it was still dark, but not long before dawn. Perhaps about four o’clock at that time of year. It must have been a nice fresh morning.’
Briers looked across the table, and said: ‘You’re ready to talk to me, aren’t you?’
There was a time of silence. How long it lasted none of them could have told. Perryman was stirring, straightening his back, sitting upright in his chair, neck like a pillar. Very slowly he once again folded his arms over his chest.
‘Oh yes, Chief Superintendent, I’m ready to talk to you.’
Shingler smoothed out his notebook, though this couldn’t be a formal statement.
‘Yes,’ Perryman was speaking with a curious expansiveness, ‘I fancy this will be the last time I’m ready to speak to you in these particular circumstances. We’ve come to the end of the road, haven’t we? You can’t accuse me of not letting you take your time. I’ve listened carefully to your various profiles of my character. Interesting, sometimes quite flattering, if one accepted your view of my moral position. I have also followed your reconstructions of certain actions of mine. I’m going to take a leaf out of your book, Chief Superintendent, and tell you that you are an unusual man. But we have to settle our bit of business, don’t we? And I’m bound to tell you that I’m getting distinctly tired of it. It’s high time we wound it up. In my profession I sometimes tell an intelligent patient that I’ll treat him like a specimen on the table being examined by the two of us. I’ve been doing a certain amount of thinking about this case of yours, if you can call it a case. I am completely disregarding whether there is any justification for any of your reconstructions. For any serious purposes of yours, they really aren’t any more relevant than your thoughts about good and evil. I can’t take these thoughts of yours all that seriously. And I can’t take your case seriously. According to my calculations, if we put the case on the table, and look at it like that, there’s really singularly little left.’
Briers had realised almost before Perryman began to talk, that this was going to be an exhibition of control. Even so, he was astonished. Perryman had been shaken at the early interrogation, more than shaken, assaulted, by questions about his money motive. That had made him look as if he were crumbling. But he had come up that morning, front as impenetrable as ever. He had a kind of inner resource, Briers now accepted it, which not only gave him assurance against enemies, but to himself. When Briers had told Perryman where he had been on the murder night, once more he had been seen to be giving up – not so outraged as about the money, but with less fight. And yet within the hour he had recovered himself again.
‘There’s no need for excessive palaver, you’ll agree, as a reasonable person,’ Perryman said, immobile, lofty, and in a tone both resentful and contemptuous. ‘Just consider your case like a body on the table. You should forget about me and your efforts at psychological creation. You have to keep things straightforward. I’m surprised that I have to tell you that. Just look at your case with clear eyes – you haven’t much there. Yes, I was connected with Lady Ashbrook, that’s been open since the beginning. Yes, I did some business for her. Yes, some of the business evaded some minor tax regulations. What does that signify? Yes, I was something like an executor after her death. Yes, I was in a position to make a little money. As this young man of yours took it on himself to point out, a very little money. And that’s all you have in straightforward fact.’
Shingler had flushed at the sneer in his direction, uttered as though he weren’t present, or were a waiter at a dinner-party.
‘The Chief Superintendent has told you, we know about your movements that night–’
‘Yes, he’s told me. He has a powerful imagination. He’s also interested in facts. I congratulate him on both qualities. It happens that I’m interested in facts myself. I’ve been thinking quite carefully about his history of my movements that night. It was an impressive exercise.’
‘Well, then?’ Shingler was both mystified and angry.
Briers sat still, face set, eyes luminous.
‘Impressive but useless.’ Perryman loosened an arm and made a gesture, sweeping, wide and grand. ‘It might have taken in some innocent creatures. In fact, you have nothing. Nothing solid. You know it. I know it. So that there is no point in going on with this dialogue, Chief Superintendent. If you’ll forgive me, I had better begin to get back to my patients.’
Laboriously he was getting to his feet, clutching the edge of the table as he stood up.
‘Oh, two minor things,’ he said. ‘I consider that I’ve helped you as much as I reasonably can. As I said this morning, I don’t feel like affording any more time for this kind of performance. If you are calling on me again, I shall need to bring in professional advice. I haven’t the time or the leisure. I’m sure you understand.’
Briers gave no indication.
‘Oh, the second thing, Chief Superintendent. I’m suffering from a touch of fibrositis. It makes walking distinctly painful. Have you ever had it? I’d be obliged if you could lay on transport.’
Without a word, Briers glanced at Shingler, who accompanied Perryman out of the room.
When, a quarter of an hour later, Shingler returned, Briers was sitting as though no muscle had moved.
‘You had to let him go, of course.’ That was Shingler’s remark.
‘Of course.’ Briers’ tone was firm and normal.
‘Well, sir?’
‘It’s a failure.’ Briers spoke in the same unmodulated tone. ‘It’s my failure, no one else’s. I’m sorry I’ve let everyone down.’
43
No one outside the background squad
knew precisely what had happened to Perryman. One official statement had been issued to the Press: Dr Ralph Perryman, Lady Ashbrook’s medical attendant, had spent some time helping the police with their enquiries, and had now returned to his professional duties. Most people, even those who had been questioned themselves, found those items baffling. It looked as though there had been one of the police gaffes. Among Perryman’s patients, there was talk of making a protest to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
As Humphrey read those words in the newspaper, he made more sense of them. Something had gone wrong, that was glaring enough. It was a pity for Frank Briers, Humphrey had a passing thought, but he must have kept his judgment cool. If he hadn’t been able to break the man down, there would have been no choice. Humphrey felt disappointment and a nagging regret. The man was getting away. It was wrong, it was taunting, it left one with the excitement still lingering, no sort of consummation after which he could sit back. There was no rightness, none of the bliss of justice being achieved and paid for. Humphrey didn’t cover up his own feelings. Nor did Kate. She had her own biblical sense of justice, but also she felt a kind of visceral relief.
Now Humphrey could understand another thing. He had been told the date of the last interrogation. He had expected a call from Briers. It hadn’t come. The days passed, and Humphrey had heard nothing, nor caught a glimpse of Briers. It was as though he had gone into hiding. Humphrey knew. He had behaved like that himself. One went on in the mode of duty, soldiered on with the job, official, competent. But one wished to avoid the notice of those who knew one was in trouble, particularly those who knew one best.
A week after those first press statements, there was one more. This merely said that papers relating to the late Lady Ashbrook’s estate had been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Inland Revenue.
As soon as Kate came into Humphrey’s drawing-room that evening, blinking after the opaque dark outside, he showed her the newsprint.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘this business began in money. It looks as though it’s finishing in money.’ He added: ‘It looks as though Frank is trying to rescue something from the wreck.’
He had kept nothing from her. She was less forgiving about financial fiddling than about most sins. Now she grimaced. ‘It really is pretty cheap, isn’t it?’
And yet, even with her, tenacious and loyal, memory was proving short. She felt guilty about it, but it sometimes seemed that Lady Ashbrook had been killed years in the past, others had told her that they felt the same. That was what she had confessed to Alec Luria one night, when he was back in London for an end of the year vacation.
‘You mustn’t grumble. You look very well on it,’ Luria said in what, Humphrey had heard it before now, was his preliminary manner with an attractive woman, paternal, severe, but not calculated to deceive the person addressed. Kate gave a surreptitious eye-flash in Humphrey’s direction. But then Alec Luria had another thought.
‘You’ve all forgotten what you were like in the summer.’
‘What have we forgotten?’
‘I don’t mean you so much. I don’t mean poor old Lady Ashbrook. But morale was very low, lower than I have ever known it here. Most people I’ve talked to thought you might all be sunk. Money worth nothing. The whole show going bankrupt. Though no one seemed to have much idea what that might mean.’
Did many people really get anxious about public affairs, affairs outside themselves, for more than a few minutes a day, Humphrey was wondering. Even in a war. Of course, Alec Luria moved among the prosperous, who might have thought they wouldn’t be prosperous much longer. Yes, there had been anxious faces.
Luria was continuing. Whitehall acquaintances of his had admitted that they went through sleepless nights. ‘And the weather didn’t help,’ said Luria. ‘You shouldn’t have weather like that in London. Hot nights. Brilliant days. About as surprising over here as when the sun first broke through the primaeval fog. And everyone was worried to death.’ Luria regarded them both. ‘Now you’re having awful weather. Even by your standards. The darkest winter days I’ve ever seen. And everyone is pretty cheerful. You ought to be safe from disaster for two or three years. And two or three years is a long time in this world of ours.’
Luria, with cheerful solemnity, gave a gloomy prognosis about the West in general and his own country in particular. Then he proceeded on to a less magisterial plane. That was gossip.
He had been in London three days. He told them the latest news of people they knew well. As usual, nearly all that he told them was later shown to be accurate. Oh yes, Tom Thirkill would get his pay-off: he would be in the Cabinet in the New Year. He had made his terms. Special responsibility, independent of the Treasury. He had had to give something in return. That nice woman of his –
‘Stella,’ said Kate.
‘That’s her. She has to get out of her political job.’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ Kate broke out, ‘she’s made him. She’s sacrificed all those years for him.’
‘Dear Kate,’ Luria said, ‘you know what politics is like.’
‘I don’t want any part of it ever. I bet that skunk didn’t think twice.’
The story was, according to Luria, that this was a concession to the backbenchers of Thirkill’s own party. They didn’t mind so much about the two living together: what they hated most was a woman having so much influence.
‘So the bastard didn’t protect her.’ Kate was violent. ‘Perhaps it will open her eyes. No, it won’t. She’ll find an excuse for him. She’ll go on being used.’
Neither of the men – for Alec Luria knew some of the history of Kate’s marriage – felt that it was appropriate to comment. In his three days in London, Luria had not only been dining out, but had been taken to bars in both the Commons and the Lords. It was just before the December recess. In the latter place, he had met Loseby sitting with some friends. Loseby would soon be there in his own right, Luria had heard. His father was in an alcoholic coma. Luria had also heard Loseby might be facing charges for tax offences.
Humphrey shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. The Revenue might mulct him with largish fines; that was the worst he could expect. If so, those fines would be paid quickly by his father-in-law. No publicity about Loseby’s finances. Thirkill would have to see to that. Someone had said that was why Loseby had married the girl – that was in the Lords’ guest-room, Luria remarked. He gave his honking laugh, but for once not at his own expense. He said: ‘In any case, my heart isn’t going to bleed for that young man. He’ll have come through without a scratch. He was saying as much to his friends. Decent intelligent characters by the way. Loseby was telling them that he was in a spot of bother. That’s what he called it. But somehow he always managed to get out of spots of bother. Or someone got him out.’
Kate said: ‘I can’t stand him. I never could. He’s too indestructible to be true. How was he taking it?’
‘Just as much the Shining One as ever, as far as I could see. He went in for some mild self-analysis. He said that, so far as he could remember, he hadn’t been perfectly honest at fifteen. And if you hadn’t been perfectly honest at fifteen it wasn’t reasonable to think that you would be any more honest at thirty. Which he seemed to think settled the matter.’
After that evening in Humphrey’s house, he didn’t see Alec Luria again until Christmas Day. Then they went out for dinner, both loose in the great closed town, as though they had been young students. It happened that Kate, apologetic, near to the tears she didn’t often show, angry with fatality, and with herself and Humphrey, had announced a day or two before that she couldn’t come to him on Christmas Day. It was the treat of the year for her husband. She had tried to suggest that he went to friends, but he had looked like a child crying. On the day itself, Humphrey was left with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Then Luria telephoned. The bass voice enquired – by any miracle, had Humphrey an hour or so free? When he heard of Humphrey’s state, he offered dinner at the best Chines
e restaurant. Chinese restaurants were suitable for Christmas, he said. If you’d been born in my family, said Luria, you wouldn’t have affectionate memories of the Christian festivals.
So the two of them, like eccentric and lonely bachelors, settled down to a prolonged Chinese meal. Whether Luria was lonely or not, and whatever his memories of childhood persecutions, he was in a state of well-being as pervasive as in Humphrey’s house a couple of weeks before. He had brought along a magnum of one of Humphrey’s favourite clarets. He was happy, and he needed Humphrey to be happy, too. Clearly something was happening in his life. It must be the prospect of another marriage, but he was cherishing the secret to himself. He might be determined to keep a secret, but he couldn’t resist letting out indications. From those, it wasn’t hard for Humphrey to guess that Luria, having been turned down by Celia, had then found a girl much younger than himself, in the English upper class. Not with money: Luria had had more than enough of that. Probably with antique English connections. Possibly from one of the grand houses. The heritage might sound all ridiculous; but for Alec Luria it was old, it was a world he had once dreamed of. Further, thought Humphrey, the girl might be someone Luria could love. Humphrey was fond of his friend, but a sardonic voice was telling him that Luria was not hard to please in the way of love, other requirements being met.
‘I’m glad I thought of this,’ Luria said, manipulating chopsticks with long dextrous fingers. ‘One doesn’t have people to talk to, at our age.’ That seemed a bizarre remark, from someone who spent so much of his time pontificating in two continents; but he was speaking with a kind of timid intimacy. A little later he said, as though at random: ‘I used to detest Christmas. But it wasn’t the worst. Good Friday was the worst. When you were young you never had people in the next block who hounded you for no reason you could understand–’