‘He said nothing else?’
‘No. Just enough to leave me worried.’
‘Did you tell anyone about this?’
‘Not then. I couldn’t talk freely on the office phone.’
‘So you went up there at 12.30?’
‘Yes. He came in a few minutes later and told me that he knew all about Ronald and me. He called me a pervert.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I broke down, I’m afraid. I couldn’t take it. He made me feel sordid.’
‘What did you say to him?’
‘I couldn’t speak for a couple of minutes. He stood there watching me and then said something about never having expected to father a queer. I shouted at him then. I hardly know what I said. Just something about finding love at last with a better man than he was. Then I ran.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘Out of the building. I didn’t come back for about an hour. I just walked round and round Westminster aimlessly. I hadn’t been long back when I got the news that he was dead.’
‘You must have hated him when he said those things to you.’
‘In a way. And yet, Superintendent, and I know you’re not going to find this easy to believe, I still felt sorry for him. I almost thought he was envious of me for being in love.’
‘You didn’t follow him into the lavatory and kill him?’
‘I did not.’
‘Did you see any sign of Mrs Bradley?’
‘No, I didn’t. But I was so upset that she could have been in the room half the time and I wouldn’t have known.’
‘Did your mother know about this episode?’
‘Yes. I told her on Monday afternoon.’
So Lady Clark hadn’t been as frank as she might have been, either. Well, she could hardly be blamed for that. Milton remembered Ann’s words about mother-love. Was it conceivable that he had in fact confided to his mother that he had killed his father and that they had together hatched a conspiracy to kill Gladys at the first available opportunity? If so, how could they know they would find her alone? Or were they just relying on luck? Milton tried to imagine Lady Clark standing by while her beloved son knifed Gladys. He couldn’t.
He let Nigel go. There was nothing more to be extracted from him for the moment. He sat down to think about where he should go from here. He had seen all the possibles except Alf Shaw, and he couldn’t really take him seriously as a suspect. What was he going to do now? Interview the lot of them all over again? Forget his kid gloves and try storm-trooper tactics this time? He wouldn’t mind putting the screws on Wells, but he would have a great deal of trouble gearing himself up to bully people as pleasant as Nixon, Parkinson, Jenkins and Lady Clark. Maybe the A.C. should put someone else on the job. He might suggest that himself tomorrow morning. Admit to being awash with information which pointed in several ways at once—but always inconclusively. Wait a minute. He’d have to see Stafford about his weekend telephone call with Sir Nicholas and tax him with what Lady Clark had heard of it. His telephone interrupted this train of thought. Amiss was on the other end again. He sounded very formal.
‘Superintendent Milton? Mr Sanders would be grateful if you could call over to see him. He has something to tell you that may be relevant to your enquiries.’
Wednesday Evening
Chapter Twenty-six
As Milton hurried over to the Department of Conservation, he was speculating furiously about what Sanders could possibly have found out. He hoped the meeting wasn’t going to be a waste of time. Odds were that Sanders had just found out independently some relevant information which he couldn’t know Amiss had already passed on to the police. Milton could do without having to go through with any such charade; he was feeling badly in need of some time to himself to reflect calmly on the case. He had been rushing from interview to paper work to interview, never having long enough without interruption to look at the evidence as a whole. It was the feeling of having let it all get on top of him that had led to his momentary defeatism after Nigel Clark had left. Offer to give up the case to someone else? Damned if he would. If he couldn’t crack it, with all the help he had had from Amiss and the personal knowledge he had built up of most of the suspects, then why should anyone else do better? Milton didn’t suffer from over-confidence, but neither did he go in for false modesty. His chances of finding the murderer were as good as anyone else’s. He wasn’t going to relinquish voluntarily the most publicized case he had ever had. Instead he would find the time to go over the evidence piece by piece and try to fit it into a pattern. He would do that before seeing the Assistant Commissioner the next morning—even if he had to stay up all night. Maybe he and Amiss would have the opportunity that evening to review some of it together.
He was curious about Sanders. Although Amiss kept on insisting that Sir Nicholas was an exception, Milton couldn’t help feeling some prejudice against senior civil servants in general and Permanent Secretaries—even temporary ones—in particular. They seemed to be at best an intellectually arrogant breed. Milton wasn’t looking forward to being patronized by a first-rate mind.
Amiss came down to reception to collect Milton. They had time for only a couple of minutes of private conversation, in which Amiss was able to reassure him that this wouldn’t be a wasted visit. Milton asked apprehensively about Sanders.
‘I always found him pleasant,’ said Amiss, ‘but I hadn’t quite realized how good he is at his job. I hope to Christ they have the sense to confirm him as Permanent Secretary when this is all over. He’s not just the best kind of civil servant, he’s a human being as well. I haven’t forgotten how he reacted to Gladys’s death. You’ll find him a bit formal, of course, but that goes with the job. We don’t, as you know, go in for hail-fellow-well-met back-slappers.’ With that, he ushered Milton into Sanders’s presence.
Sanders had snow-white hair topping a rather rubicund face; his dark suit was cut to conceal his round stomach. Milton thought that at less serious moments he would resemble a taller version of a Cheeryble brother. His present gravity couldn’t entirely eradicate the pleasant connotations of the laughter lines around his mouth and eyes. Amiss introduced them and asked Sanders if he would like them to be left alone.
‘No, Robert. This is an informal meeting and you might be able to shed some light on what we are about to discuss. After all, latterly you must have known Nicholas better than I did. Don’t feel inhibited. This isn’t the time to close ranks, so forget about discretion. In deciding to tell the Superintendent about this curious business with Wells, I’ve had to put personal feelings before my professional dislike of breaching confidentiality. You, I suggest, should do the same.’
Well, well. Another mole. Milton felt privileged indeed.
As they sat down he noticed that much in the office had changed since Sanders had taken over. Along the bookcase stretched a line of busts of the classical composers. The walls glowed with life. Sanders seemed to favour pictures full of richness and incident. Milton recognized Vermeer and Botticelli. And Lowry, for heaven’s sake. Sanders obviously didn’t share Sir Nicholas’s distaste for the proletariat. On a table beside his desk was a pile of library books in transit—and Milton recognized them as novels. That was a heartening sign.
Sanders asked him some polite questions about the case, which gave Milton an opportunity to reinforce his obvious desire to be helpful.
‘I’ve made quite a lot of progress, sir, but I can’t say that I’m close to a solution. It’s a bewildering world, yours. It hasn’t been easy to disentangle motives. Anything you can do to help will be greatly appreciated.’
Sanders smiled. ‘I sympathize with you, Superintendent. I wouldn’t like to be an outsider trying to get information out of civil servants and politicians. I’ll give you any help I can. I am very angry about Mrs Bradley’s death—frankly far more upset than I was about Sir
Nicholas’s. The Secretary of State has told me about his behaviour and I have reason to know that he treated a number of people badly. There haven’t been a lot of tears shed for him here. I think he had forgotten he was supposed to be a public servant rather than an unhappy man taking his personal disappointments out on those around him.’
Milton noticed with amusement that Amiss’s mouth had dropped open. So Amiss was wrong in thinking he had these people taped. They could still produce surprises.
‘Have you any idea, sir, why Sir Nicholas acted as he did?’
‘No, Superintendent. I was never a personal friend of his, though we were colleagues for many years. He seemed in the early days to be a reasonable enough fellow to deal with. You could always rely on him to play a straight bat. There was never any doubt about his ability: he had it in him to reach the very top. But over the past four or five years I detected a rapid change in him. He turned extremely offensive to colleagues and began to be obstructive for the sake of it. He didn’t let this side of him show to his superiors, though, so he still gained promotion to Permanent Secretary. I hoped then that he would be satisfied and that pleasure in his success might soften him. Unfortunately, it proved to be otherwise. He became increasingly difficult to work with—recently, almost impossible. Of course, as you might expect, he was far too wily to do anything that would lead to demotion or early retirement. Until last weekend he always played by the rules.’
‘You don’t have any idea who might have murdered him?’
‘Not until now, Superintendent. I realize the Secretary of State must have been very sore with him, but I could never see a man of his gentle disposition responding to any provocation with violence. I don’t know of anyone else present at that meeting who could have had reason to do more than dislike Nicholas. Except, I regret to say, our Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, William Wells, who, I now find, had an excellent reason to feel the urge to strike him with the nearest blunt instrument. And he is a man at least capable of savage anger. I have seen him lose his temper on several occasions when he thought he was being thwarted.’
‘Go on,’ said Milton, leaning forward expectantly.
‘Late this afternoon, returning from a meeting, I was rung up by a junior colleague, Alan Wilmot, who was in a state of panic. He had heard from one of our regional offices that an article had appeared in today’s local paper, written by Wells and headed “LOCAL M.P. SAVES 3,000 JOBS”, with the sub-heading, “How I did it”.’
Milton looked puzzled.
‘I had better explain the background of this to you. The nub of the matter is that in Wells’s constituency there is an enormous plant which deals with chemical recycling. It is desperately important to the economic health of the area, once all the ancillary jobs and the knock-on effect are taken into account. After a couple of bad years it is threatened with immediate closure by its multinational parent company. We were asked to bail it out by the company’s English management and unions, who claimed that its long-term prospects were good, and that it was in the public interest to provide twenty million pounds of government money to keep it going for another year until the market took an upturn. The parent company had agreed that they would keep the plant operating if this interest-free loan were made available; repayment was to be over the next ten years.’
‘Twenty million pounds is a great deal of money, sir. I shouldn’t have expected it to be a reasonable request from a private company.’
‘Well, it was to be just a loan, and three thousand added to the unemployment register is a lot of people. The decision rested on whether the company really was viable and would survive and be able to repay the money. Wells, as you might imagine, was desperately anxious to save the company. His seat is a marginal one, and for him to be able to claim the credit for saving so many jobs would have virtually guaranteed his being successful in the General Election which cannot be far away. He fought very hard within the department, the party and the government to get agreement to the loan. His hopes were pretty high. Too high, really. The decision was always in doubt. I have reason to believe that he made some incautiously arrogant statements in his constituency about his ability to pull it off.’
‘But I thought ministers as junior as Wells didn’t have much power?’
‘Quite right, Superintendent. They don’t. Our Mr Wells, however, is one of those who believe that by the sheer exercise of aggression and energy you can accomplish anything. He lobbied extensively both within and without the department, and used every opportunity to try to embarrass the government into making the money available.’
‘And he succeeded?’
‘No, he didn’t, Superintendent. That is the whole point. Wells’s self-congratulatory article appeared on the very day a letter had been sent out to the company telling its management that the loan would not be forthcoming. In an effort to claim the maximum credit for himself in his constituency, Wells had jumped the gun and set himself up for the most tremendous fall.’
‘How could he get it so wrong, sir?’ asked Milton, bewildered. Wells hadn’t struck him as being an idiot.
‘Because, Superintendent, Nicholas told him it was safe to go ahead with the article.’
Chapter Twenty-seven
Milton had long since lost the capacity to be surprised at Sir Nicholas’s malevolence, but he could still be astounded at his ingenuity.
‘I’m sorry, sir. I can’t believe I’ve understood you correctly. Are you saying that Wells didn’t know Sir Nicholas had given him false information, and that he therefore let the article appear today? In that case, I don’t see what it has got to do with Sir Nicholas’s murder. Or are you saying Wells knew on Monday morning about the trick Sir Nicholas had played on him and therefore had a motive to kill him? In which case, why didn’t he stop the article?’
‘Wells knew all right. I haven’t been able to get hold of him this evening, but his Private Secretary tells me that he heard Wells having an argument on the telephone on Monday afternoon with the editor of the newspaper in question. He was trying to withdraw his article.’
Milton was still lost. Weren’t Private Secretaries supposed to be omniscient?
‘Why didn’t the Private Secretary tell you about this earlier, sir?’
‘He didn’t grasp what was going on. He hadn’t seen the article Wells had sent in, and didn’t realize that it announced that the loan had been granted. He just assumed Wells had had second thoughts about something in it.’
‘But why couldn’t Wells kill the article?’
‘Because it was too late; the paper had already gone to bed. Besides, there’s no knowing how explicit he was with the editor. Knowing him, he’d have started with bully-boy tactics, and found it difficult to climb down later and admit that he’d been totally wrong-footed.’
‘But for heaven’s sake, sir, Wells would surely have told you about it?’
‘He certainly should have, Superintendent, and I shall be very interested to hear why he didn’t. There hasn’t been a word from him about it. That’s why I was so thunderstruck when I heard. I have no idea what he’s playing at. He cancelled several meetings scheduled for today and didn’t come in to the office. He pleaded personal reasons. We haven’t been able to get hold of him anywhere.’
‘Is he expected in tomorrow, sir?’
‘He is, and he’ll have a warm reception. Even our mild-mannered Secretary of State will be hopping mad over this.’
‘So you are suggesting, sir, that Wells found out that Sir Nicholas had landed him in the mire and killed him in a fit of rage?’
‘That is going much too far, Superintendent. I am merely suggesting that if Wells—as seems certain—found out on Monday morning that his upstaging of his colleagues was going to threaten his career he would have been extremely upset.’
‘He’s very ambitious, isn’t he?’
‘Exc
eptionally so, Superintendent.’
‘It looks as though we shall have to wait until tomorrow to find out what has caused him to remain silent about this since Monday. In the meantime, could we talk about Sir Nicholas’s motive for playing such a dirty trick? I gather he didn’t like Wells, but this was something which would reflect on the government and the department as well.’
‘It certainly will. We have two options. Either we ring the company in the morning and tell them to ignore our letter rejecting their request, or we tell them later that a minister—albeit a junior minister—had been so badly misled by colleagues in government that he has given totally wrong information to a newspaper. If we do the first, we gain some time at the expense of looking like fools. It will give the government a chance to reconsider the argument for lending the money, and they may be driven to giving in to avoid the political embarrassment of opting for the second course.’
‘As a matter of curiosity, why did the decision go against making the loan?’
‘Because on balance we are pretty sure the company will fold within the next couple of years whatever we do. We would be taking an unacceptable risk with taxpayers’ money.’
‘In that case, surely the decision won’t be reversed?’
‘It’s too close to an election for that to be a certainty. The Cabinet have already taken a courageous decision once. With this new complication, they may well change their minds. There was only a small majority against the loan anyway.’
‘When was the decision taken?’
‘Last Friday. That was a stroke of luck for Nicholas. The Cabinet usually meets on Thursdays, but it met late on this occasion because the Prime Minister was out of the country for most of the week. That meant that Nicholas was able to tell Wells on Friday evening to go ahead with the article, knowing that he wouldn’t hear about the true decision until the following Monday.’
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