‘You seem very certain, sir, that Sir Nicholas told Wells to go ahead.’
‘I’m guessing a little, but I’m pretty sure that is what happened. Wells’s Private Secretary told me that Wells had made an appointment with Nicholas to see him when news came through of the Cabinet decision. Wells had written two alternative articles. The other was a justification of the decision to reject the loan. It fell back on platitudes about the effort he would be putting into pushing government to invest in job-creation schemes in other firms in the constituency. Nicholas summoned Wells in the late afternoon. He went off to see him carrying both articles and didn’t come back to his office again.’
Milton knitted his brows. ‘I thought civil servants wrote this kind of article for their ministers. Isn’t there some kind of elaborate P.R. service which controls what is sent to the press?’
‘There is, Superintendent, but Wells insisted on writing the articles himself. Nicholas had undertaken to vet them for publication—another proof that he was trying to make mischief. From what Alan Wilmot has told me about the article which has appeared, no civil servant or minister would have approved its tone. It is deliberately slanted to give Wells a far bigger part in the matter than he in fact played. Indeed, it was typical of his arrogance to try it on. He would have expected it to be considerably watered down by Nicholas. He must have been cock-a-hoop when he was unexpectedly told he could go ahead with it in its present form.’
‘I can well see that he must have been in a state of spectacular fury when he discovered the truth,’ said Milton. ‘He’s going to have a lot of explaining to do. I’m very grateful to you for letting me know about this.’
‘I should be grateful if you could find some way of concealing from him the precise source of your information, Superintendent. It will make for bad relations. Many people would think I should have left you to find out for yourself. I don’t intend to mention to my colleagues that it was I who told you.’
‘When will it be common knowledge, sir?’
‘In the department? I should think by mid-morning tomorrow.’
‘In that case, sir, I shan’t get in touch with Mr Wells until then. If he asks, I’ll tell him I got an anonymous tip-off.’
‘That is very considerate of you, Superintendent.’
‘One must always try to protect one’s informants, sir. I don’t want you to think twice the next time you contemplate helping us.’
Sanders suddenly recollected Amiss’s presence. ‘I’m sorry, Robert. I forgot to invite you to give the Superintendent your views.’
‘Don’t worry, Douglas. I had nothing to add. As you know, I agree with your interpretation of events. I’m quite certain that Sir Nicholas hated Wells enough to have seized on this opportunity to discredit him. Nor do I think he would have let loyalty to his department hold him back. Lately, he didn’t seem to have any respect at all for his colleagues.’
‘I must say, Superintendent,’ said Sanders reflectively, ‘that though I am of course anxious that the murderer be found soon, I am even more anxious to discover why Nicholas went off the rails as he seems to have done?’
‘I can think of two reasons, connected with his private life, but I am at a complete loss to understand why he should take his private miseries out on two public figures. I hope to understand this before I finish the investigation.’
They said friendly goodbyes, and Amiss ushered Milton out. ‘I hadn’t imagined that you could stay quiet for so long,’ said Milton, grinning at him.
‘Long practice,’ Amiss replied, grinning back. ‘I’ve done well in the service by learning when to keep my mouth shut. Humility is a quality in short supply among graduate entrants. I decided long ago to give at least an appearance of it. It’s made me very popular with my superiors.’
‘See you later.’
‘I can’t wait. I’ll see if I can’t find some more motives, meanwhile.’
‘Just you dare,’ Milton grunted, as he stumped off back to the Yard.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Milton got through his discussions with his sergeants in half an hour. Then he spent several minutes sitting alone, staring at the grimy wall in front of him, going over the events of the past few days, the card-sorter in his head set for ‘nagging doubts’. There was one that had been bothering him on and off since the previous morning. Who had sent the postcard to the Yard pointing the finger at Lady Clark and Martin Jenkins? Of course, as he had earlier imagined, it could be simply the work of a busybody, or of someone completely unconnected with the case who thought it was a lead the police should follow up. Alternatively, it could be the work of the murderer, seeking to distract attention from himself. That would mean it was either Nixon, Wells, Parkinson, Stafford or Shaw. It could hardly be Lady Clark’s beloved son.
He called Romford in again.
‘What’s the news about the postcard?’
‘The handwriting lads haven’t come up with anything yet, sir. Block capitals, cheap ball-pen. Difficult.’
I know, Romford, I know. ‘Have they had all the examples of handwriting we asked the suspects to provide?’
‘They should have had them all by now, sir.’
Milton didn’t really have much hope that anything would come of this. Still, he was impatient to have the possibility ruled out. A thought struck him.
‘Have you held back a photocopy of the message?’
‘Of course, sir,’ said Romford in a wounded tone. He was very sensitive to any suggestion that he wasn’t on the ball.
‘Well done,’ said Milton soothingly. ‘Can you let me have it, please?’
He jammed it into his case and went off to the Star of India. As he had expected, Amiss was again there ahead of him.
Milton fell into his chair. ‘What a day! Tell you what, let’s go and eat at a brightly-lit table in one of those smart English places where the nobs go, and discuss all this in loud voices over Dover sole and saddle of lamb!’
‘Lamb cutlets and chips on the menu here. Look—“with minty sauce.” Guts not holding up too well, then? Mine are fine.’
‘You’re enjoying all this too much, Robert,’ said Milton reprovingly. ‘You must be in the wrong job. Why don’t you join the force?’
‘Christ, no. It’s one thing playing at the wonder-boy assistant, but I don’t fancy doing it professionally. I’m the weedy intellectual type. I never fancied doing anything dangerous.’
‘Maybe you’re right. Nobody’s hit me in recent years, but I still have a couple of scars from Grosvenor Square in 1969.’
‘Maybe you got them from me, Jim. I was an idealist in those days. In fact, one of the things that put me off demonstrations was the sight of what went on there. I got stuck in the middle of a real barney between a couple of tough coppers and a handful of hairy protesters, and I didn’t enjoy it one single bit.’
‘I put you down as the middle-of-the-road type—left-wing Tory if anything. I’ll try those lamb chops.’
Amiss did the honours with the waiter, whose white jacket, Milton’s trained eye noted, had borne the same pattern of stains for three evenings now.
‘Right-wing Labour is more the mark. I’ve moved to the right since I joined the service and discovered pragmatism.’
‘You mean you were well left-of-centre when you were recruited? I thought they only took moderates?’
‘As long as you don’t let your political views influence your judgement you can be anything short of a member of a party committed to the overthrow of the established order. The service assumes quite rightly that experience of the realities of government will dampen anyone’s political ardour. I’d imagine you get proportionately more floating voters in the service than among the population as a whole. We tend to vote for a front bench rather than for a party.’
‘You’re too complicated a speci
es for a simple policeman,’ grumbled Milton. ‘What about Sanders, then? He certainly came across with the goods. I thought you said they were all too cautious for that.’
‘Sanders is rather different—I hadn’t realized how different until I began to work for him. I think he’s been inhibited by Sir Nicholas so far. He seems to be prepared to take risks now that he’s got no one leaning on him. Not that he’s going to change character entirely—he’s been a civil servant too long for that, but he’ll certainly loosen the reins on the department slightly. There are some senior people who believe in being a bit more open about what goes on in government. It’s just that their style is cramped by the anal retentives of the old school. Anyway, what did you make of what Sanders told you?’
‘What I said. I can’t decide if it’s a welcome or unwelcome piece of news. There seem to be more motives than opportunities in this case. Let me tell you about what came up today.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Amiss, when Milton had finished his saga and his dreadful meal and was solacing himself with a brandy. ‘What was Sir Nicholas trying to do on Monday morning? Start a riot?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. He certainly had the bit between his teeth. I don’t think I’ll ever understand what he was up to. It’s bad enough trying to work out what everyone else was doing. Nixon had a motive; Wells at least two. Parkinson had one. So had Nigel. Lady Clark’s statement that Sir Nicholas had been unpleasant to Stafford strengthens his. At least Jenkins and Shaw seem to be in the clear.’
‘You haven’t seen Shaw yet, have you?’
‘No,’ groaned Milton. ‘He’s getting cross about always being postponed in favour of the next hot suspect. I hope nothing crops up to stop me seeing him tomorrow.’
‘Who else are you seeing?’
‘Well, Stafford and Wells, of course. And I suppose I’d better go back and quiz Lady Clark about Nigel. If no one else looks particularly promising, I’ll have to try out the theory that he killed his father in a rage and she helped him kill Gladys. I’ll feel pretty silly suggesting it.’
‘You haven’t quite ruled out Jenkins, have you?’
‘I have, really. As he said, it would have been pointless for him to kill Sir Nicholas, since he was going to get his wife anyway. IGGY isn’t such an attractive committee that he’d kill to stay on it, is it?’
‘God, no. It’s incredibly tedious. Mind you, a lot of people do like to boast about being members of it; it makes them feel as if they’re at the centre of things. But it would take a really dedicated Establishment climber to make that a reason for murder.’
‘What’s more, anybody with such a reason would presumably wait for a better opportunity to do the job. Whoever murdered Sir Nicholas took an enormous risk. It certainly can’t have been premeditated.’
‘You don’t think Jenkins was lying about failing to find him, do you? Maybe he did and Sir Nicholas said something really foul about his wife. Welshmen are supposed to be hot-tempered, aren’t they?’
‘I suppose it’s possible, Robert, but it really looks to me as if he wouldn’t be the type to rise to that kind of provocation. He was going to get her away from Sir Nicholas. Wouldn’t that have made him magnanimous?’
‘I suppose it would,’ sighed Amiss. ‘I have to admit to an unworthy motive in trying to make a case against him. It would be very nice for the department if the whole thing proved to have nothing to do with us. The press will have the time of their lives if it emerges that it was either Nixon, Wells or Parkinson. Even Stafford wouldn’t be too good from our point of view. It would cast doubt on our methods of arriving at decisions about grants.’
‘Who’s being an anal retentive now?’
‘I’m not, am I? Be careful. I get upset when anyone suggests I’m turning into a civil-service stereotype. That’s probably because it’s true. One of my staff called me “a toffee-nosed fartarse” today.’
‘I thought you were guaranteed respect from your subordinates?’
‘You haven’t met Phil. You’d better not, either. He doesn’t think much of the pigs.’
‘He seems to be an unexpected kind of person to recruit into your sober outfit.’
‘You’d be surprised. Personnel are so desperate to get bright youngsters into the service that they’ll accept all sorts of eccentricities now. There’s a fellow downstairs who wears a nappy pin through his left ear. And Phil’s favourite tee-shirt has “bullshit” printed across it. He wasn’t allowed to wear it when Sir Nicholas was in the office, but hardly anyone else seems to mind. Sanders even likes it. He’s appointed Phil his court jester. This afternoon, I was in with him, and Phil had been brought into the room to unpack some of Sanders’s belongings. Sanders was in full flow about some esoteric aspect of policy. You’ll have noticed that he’s not above the occasional bureaucratic cliché. “You perceive my thrust?” he said at one point, and Phil turned round from where he was kneeling by a carton on the floor, stared him in the groin, and said “Snuffink to brag about”. I thought for a moment Sanders was going to choke, and then he burst out laughing. Said he was pleased to have someone who recognized the absurdities of civil-service phraseology when he heard them. I wasn’t too pleased at that reaction, I can tell you. It’ll make the little sod impossibly cocky—not that he isn’t that already.’
‘You’ve cheered me up, Robert. I must be off. I’ve got some hard thinking to do tonight, and it’s late already. Would you mind if I brought my wife along tomorrow night? I haven’t had an evening with her all week, and she’d be interested in talking about the case. She’s a psychologist, so she might have some insights into Sir Nicholas.’
Amiss agreed enthusiastically.
‘One more thing before I go, and a very long shot.’ He handed Amiss the photocopy Romford had provided. ‘You don’t know anybody who makes his capitals like that, do you? We’re pretty sure they’re disguised.’
‘No, sorry. They could be anybody’s. On a postcard, you said?’
‘Yes.’ Milton rose to go. ‘A crank, probably, who thought he had a sense of humour.’
‘But it isn’t a joke. It’s true about Jenkins and Lady Clark.’
‘Oh, certainly. The postcard, though—it was one of those incredibly unfunny seaside things. Somebody’s wife with a coalman.’
‘Coalman?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sit down. I know who sent it.’
Chapter Twenty-nine
By midnight Milton had said good-night to Ann and had settled himself in his armchair to think things through again. The conversation with Amiss over the extra cup of coffee had taken on a more urgent tone than any previously. On Monday and Tuesday evenings, they’d pretty well made presentations to each other of evidence and hypotheses that they’d had time to digest individually. When Amiss dropped his bombshell about the postcard, they found themselves engaged in the kind of question-and-answer, thrust-and-parry dialogue that each was accustomed to having internally in striving for judgements and conclusions.
The postcard was from Sir Nicholas. Oh, God. How could it be? Come back to that later … All right: what evidence? Amiss had seen it, blank, in old Nick’s briefcase the week before—retrieving a draft so that Julia could correct a typing error. Sir Nicholas? A dirty postcard? He used to call Jenkins ‘The Coalman’—Welsh prole, see? Amiss had been surprised by the postcard but had thought no more of it at the time: certainly hadn’t connected it with Lady C. But the postmark? Eight hours after his death? Well, he’d hardly put it in his own out-tray, would he? And non-urgent mail from general offices—big mail-shots, for instance—was often collected in bulk by Post Office vans at close of play. Could easily sit around at the sorting-office and be franked mid-evening. Nothing to stop Sir Nicholas finding such a pile of mail in a nearby office and slipping the postcard into it. Possible enough, but what was he up to? That question again. The answ
er has to come from a broader pattern. General category of shit-stirring, for the moment. Why send it to the Police Commissioner? Highly moral man, Sir Peter; a long interview in one of the Sunday heavies just last week—importance of family life and so on. Besides, if Sir Nicholas was embarking, as seemed to be the case, on the most thorough-going campaign of mischief-making since … since … (Since Dennis the Menace? Hardly fitting …) he’d probably written to the Queen and the Archbishop of Canterbury as well. But what would the Commissioner have done about it in normal circumstances? Nothing. Wouldn’t have been any of his business. Was Sir Nicholas expecting to be murdered, then? Planting clues for a posthumous revenge in case one of his victims did go berserk? Worth thinking about.
Pouring himself a drink, Milton could not clearly remember who had contributed what to the deductive process. Once again, he would have to take credit the next morning for inspired lateral thinking. If nudged, the handwriting experts could probably find enough resemblance—that manuscript speech in Sir Nicholas’s study at home had plenty of capitals in it. Romford could be sent to get it. Having it proved that Sir Nicholas had sent the card would constitute a Pyrrhic victory, though. He might get a slap on the back from the A.C., but the trail to the murderer would have been blurred yet again. It would have been clearer had the postcard turned out to be a prurient hoax. Confusion worse confounded. Why couldn’t he just once have a new piece of evidence which simplified things rather than fouling them up further?
He told himself harshly to drop the self-pity and start doing something constructive. He needed a clear head when he had his progress meeting the next morning. He put the bottle away, picked up a sheet of paper and began to write steadily.
Nigel Clark
Sir Nicholas Clark’s murder
Motive:
Sir Nicholas called him a pervert.
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