Not to touch, please! Varosh is most infectable! Ugh. Yes, Mrs Newbury had still been huddled in there, in the amniotic booze, because it had been days later when Lydia had stood in the garden with the spy and seen Count Linden staring down at that convenient patch of fresh-dug earth in which Mrs Newbury could be buried hugger-mugger. When? Why, the night of the Russian Embassy reception, because the only way out to the garden was through the basement, which meant that the Timmses had to be out of the way. So Paul knew. Of course he did. In the car, going to the cemetery, Lydia had mentioned Aakisen out of the blue and Paul had been startled. Then, very quickly, he had come up with the plausible pretence that she’d thought that the Livs were burying Aakisen by proxy. But he’d known it was the hero himself.
Slopping a brushful of paste onto the third strip of paper Lydia decided that the one person who had a right to know the truth was Procne, who had wept there, beside a stranger’s grave. Anyway, she’d love it—that was drama, in the Newbury style.
In fact there’d been two heroes, Aaku and Mrs Newbury, but she’d been real and solid till her last evening, whereas he’d been made into a sort of ghost long before he died, only his name any use, and his ability to make good varosh. His duty had been to become a legend. All that had mattered was the lies that could be told about him, first the imaginary escapades and then the imaginary sufferings. Bloody old men! The worst of it was that they’d become so immersed in their own falsehoods that they’d needed to carry them to the sentimental end of that awful funeral. Really it would have been more honourable to tuck Aakisen away in the rose-bed. But that would have denied them the last chance to summon a lump into their scrawny old throats. Bastards!
However … this strip of paper seemed almost to float itself into place, confirming like an omen the rightness of Lydia’s choice. All governments, to her, were abominable, but not equally so. She didn’t care whether there was any logic in her instinct to support the tiny and defunct government upstairs against the vast and far-reaching neo-Stalinist engine in the Kremlin. She simply knew that their smallness made them incapable of more than little lies and minor mischiefs, whereas in Russia there were probably ten thousand Aakus and a million Mrs Newburys. Perhaps she would mull the problem through with Richard one night; he liked large and abstract questions (think first, fight afterwards, the soldier’s art) though Richard himself preferred trains of thought that didn’t rattle towards the trenches of action. But Lydia’s main mode of thought was action. Her dealings with Superintendent Austen confirmed her belief that the government of Britain was only marginally better than that of Russia, because an historical accident had left the individual citizen with a little more power against it; but the police state was there, waiting to be released into domination, like a djinn in a bottle.
So, slowly, her anger with the old Livs and Paul settled into an almost pleasurable displeasure with them. They had behaved disgustingly, but that was the nature of governments, and at least their crimes had been crimes against the dead. To embarrass them would be to help the Kremlin. Her choice to say nothing had stood the test of action.
The papering continued to go well; but no old house has a true right-angle anywhere in it; in every corner each wall meets its neighbour on a slight skew, so that if you simply run the strips on round it you find that what was a vertical on the first wall has become a slant on the second. Lydia was sliding in a neat gusset to turn the corner towards the door when big feet banged on the stairs and a uniformed policeman bounced into the room, a large young man, excited as a puppy.
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry. Seen the super?”
“Upstairs,” said Lydia. “Were you the chap who was looking for Mr Roberts, the gardener?”
“Not me, ma’am, but I hear there’s no sign of him.”
“Damn,” said Lydia. She hadn’t particularly wanted him to do anything, but his absence was disturbing, a symptom of disorder setting in in an area where she thought she had created order.
“Seeing you,” said the policeman and charged off like a schoolboy looking for Mum to tell her that he’s down to play for the under-twelves on Saturday. His overt excitement reminded Lydia of something that she had barely noticed, but had somehow registered, during her interview with Austen. He had been excited too, and so had Eissmann. But Aaku had died of cancer, and Mrs Newbury of a fall—there was only this complicated and unnecessary mess to be cleared up, and where was the excitement in that?
Next time feet rattled on the stairs she was on the ladder, measuring for the strip that would have to run down beside the door and half-way across the top of it.
“Hang on,” she called. “I’m on the ladder just inside. I’ll be about a minute. Why don’t you put the kettle on for some coffee?”
There was no answer. When she took the ladder away Austen and Eissmann heaved into the room with solemn tread. Even though her head was full of figures Lydia could sense that their mood had changed.
“Now, madam …” began the Superintendent.
“Wait a sec. Just let me write my measurements down.”
He sighed, but said nothing.
“OK,” she said, picking up her scissors.
“Now madam, I am saying this because I don’t want any misunderstandings and difficulties later. With a more co-operative citizen there’d be no need for me to become this formal at this stage, but I want you to understand that a serious crime had been committed and it is part of my duty to question you. You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but what you say may be put into writing and given in evidence.”
“Seriously?”
“This is a serious matter.”
“Christ!”
“Now …”
“Wait a minute.”
Lydia took the scissors off her fingers slowly, as if she were peeling off a glove. Her first thought was to wish that she owned a tape-recorder. As a next best she chose a piece of wallpaper from her heap of scrap, put it on the mantelpiece and wrote at the top “Memo of interrogation of L.T. by Superintendent Austen, Monday April 3rd, Sergeant Eissmann also present.”
“OK,” she said.
Austen walked over to see what she had written.
“That’s quite unnecessary,” he said.
“I hope so.”
“Well, if you wish … My first question is whether you have any knowledge of a sum of money left in her room by Mrs Newbury.”
Lydia dropped her pencil. As she scrabbled for it, she wondered bow a policeman puts into his notebook, as evidence, an obvious and appalling start of surprise.
“I’m afraid I can’t answer that,” she said, still on her knees. Austen waited for her to rise.
“When you say you can’t answer, do you mean simply that you don’t know?” he said.
“I can’t answer that either.”
He waited again. Sergeant Eissmann was quicker at taking down notes than Lydia.
“Well,” said Austen at last, “do you have any knowledge of a will left by the late Mrs Newbury?”
“Same answer,” she said, not looking up from her scribbling.
“Let me make this quite clear, Lady Timms. You are not saying that you know nothing about the will or the money? You are saying that you are not prepared to answer questions about them.”
“No I’m not. I’m saying I can’t.”
“But you admit that the will and the money exist, or existed.”
“I can’t answer that, either.”
This time his pause lasted longer than it took Lydia to write down her note.
“You realise, Lady Timms,” he said at last, “that in view of your refusal to answer two simple questions I have every justification for asking you to accompany me to the police station for further questioning?”
“And I have every justification in refusing to come. You have to arrest me, formally, before you can make
me come, and after that I have an absolute right to refuse to answer questions and to demand to see a solicitor. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“That is part of the Judges’ Rules, yes.”
“Judges’ Rules, hell. That’s part of the law, isn’t it?”
“If you say so.”
“Well, do you really want to go through all that? I’m afraid it wouldn’t get you any further, because those are questions I literally can’t answer, no matter how much you banged away at them. If you want to arrest me, I’ll come, of course. I imagine you’d give me time to make arrangements for my son to be looked after.”
She had no idea whether the threat was real, or whether the mention of Dickie changed his mind (not necessarily out of human kindness, for there were still a couple of photographers hanging about and Dickie was an extremely photogenic kid). She could sense his hesitation as she scribbled.
“You misunderstand me,” he said. “I was only trying to point out to you how suspicious your refusal to answer these questions might seem. A serious crime has been committed, and …”
“Has it?” said Lydia. “You don’t know whether any money or will existed. Perhaps it’s only gossip. If they did exist, perhaps they haven’t been nicked. Otherwise there’s only this stupid business of somebody putting bodies in the wrong place. That’s not really a serious crime, is it?”
“Some might think it so, Lady Timms. But you will have to take my word for it that a crime which even you would recognise as serious has been committed.”
“Oh … OK … well …”
“And you still refuse to answer the two questions I asked you?”
“I can’t, I tell you! Damn! I’ve forgotten to write any of this down.”
“Take a copy from mine, ma’am,” suggested Sergeant Eissmann.
“What crime, anyway?” said Lydia.
“I am not obliged to tell you that,” said Austen.
“All right,” said Lydia. “Look, I’ve accept your word that it matters. Will you accept mine that I’ve got a perfectly good reason for not being able to answer those two questions? I’m sure there’s lots of others I could answer.”
The moment she’d said it it sounded stupid.
“I think we’ll leave it at that for the moment, Lady Timms. I have other enquiries I can make elsewhere. I think it’s a great pity that your husband is not here, and I advise you very strongly to talk this matter over when he returns.”
“OK.”
“Shall I initial your notes of our conversation?”
“Oh … thanks.”
It was astonishing, when they’d gone, that the L-shaped strip of paper that Lydia cut from the measurements she’d scribbled down ten minutes before fitted. One might have expected the world to be a slightly different shape, after all that.
Chapter 22
It was irritating not to have finished the papering, but a relief to be out of the house. Lydia was experiencing all over again the oppression and despair that had settled on her when she had first discovered the dry rot, a feeling of half-mysterious forces working against her, which were also somehow her fault, so that if she had noticed the symptoms sooner, or traced the trouble at to its cause the moment she had noticed them, then coping with it would have been cheap and simple, instead of a long, grimy and costly struggle. As she walked along the Crescent the mood began to lift; a gang of small girls were playing hopscotch; male pigeons were pouting at coyly circling females; the green of the new leaves in the privet hedges was a strong as fresh paint, not yet dusty with urban summer. She began to look forward to her lunch, a proper lunch, since Dickie was at home, grilled bacon and peas and …
“Hi, Lydia,” said a deep voice. For a moment it seemed to come from nowhere, then she saw that the large white car by the kerb wasn’t parked there, but had Mr Ambrose in the driving seat. His big head, made bigger by a gold turban, leaned out of the window. He was wearing dark glasses.
“Spare me a minute, sweetie?” he said.
“I’m afraid I can’t. I’ve got to fetch my son.”
“Ah, come on,” he said, patting the seat beside him. “Let the little bastard wait. He’s got to learn some time.”
“Sorry,” said Lydia. “Is Mr Roberts OK? He didn’t come this morning.”
“You’ve got trouble. Bob doesn’t like trouble.”
“It isn’t anything serious.”
The arched eyebrows rose clear of the dark lenses.
“You’ve got plenty of trouble, Lydia,” he said. “I want to talk to you about that.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t got time, and in any case it’s none of your business.”
“Everything that happens round here is my business, sweetie. I hear you’ve been seeing my little friend Procne.”
“That’s none of your business either.”
“You’d better stop seeing Procne, Lydia. It’s not the sort of friendship that will do either of you any good.”
There was something wholly infuriating about his manner, his largeness, his calm slouch at the driving-wheel, his apparent assumption of omniscience, his possessive attitude to Procne—even, in the sparkling April noon, his darkness which seemed to challenge her to say something unforgivably racialist about him, which he would then forgive. But before Lydia could decide whether to walk on without answering or to tell him once again to mind his own business, his manner changed. He had been shaking his huge head slowly to and fro, as if to emphasise the unwisdom of Lydia’s relationship with Procne, but suddenly he froze, frowned at his wing mirror, started his car and drove away without another word.
Lydia simply stood staring, then swung round to see what he had noticed in the mirror. There seemed to be nothing, except a nondescript young man in a tan jacket admiring Mrs Tevell’s daffodils. She walked on, disturbed more by her dislike of Mr Ambrose than by anything he had said. It was, after all, perfectly natural, if Mr Ambrose’s job was criminal rehabilitation, that he should know Procne—a coincidence, but not an impossible one. It was also natural that he should resent the intrusion of an amateur. Lydia even approved, in theory, of his eccentric approach to his job; anything was better than to be just one of the precedent-following, rule-worshipping workers in the official hive, the them of us and them. But that didn’t make it easy to like him. He was a bully, and somehow bullies for the right are more objectionable than bullies for the wrong.
It was just the bad luck of the young man in the tan jacket that Dickie dropped his cardboard Spitfire in the gutter in such a way that as he darted back for it Lydia spun round to check that he wasn’t rushing into the road. The young man, unprepared, hesitated much too obviously before turning into the nearest shop which (again unluckily) was an undertaker’s. No doubt you could have thought of explanations for it all, including his sudden decision to make an enquiry about a funeral in a jacket like that, but Lydia didn’t bother. He was following her.
It was as though a hunter, after a long, blank day in which juicy game had appeared frequently over his sights only to move into cover before he could squeeze the trigger, came towards evening on a sitting target, a half-grown rabbit, perhaps, which he’d normally have let scuttle away but now in his frustration he blasted to bits with both barrels. Lydia’s anger, too, had found a target. She astonished Dickie by dragging him into a stationer’s and buying him a usually forbidden Wizard. It enraged her still more that the man was so incompetent at his job. Now he was actually standing on the pavement outside, wondering where she’d got to. If the police are going to intrude on your privacy by following you on your most harmless errands, they might at least do it with competence. Lydia ran her mind over the opening shots of her onslaught, then walked briskly out and touched his elbow.
“Are you looking for me?” she said.
He turned. His hand rose as if to remove the hat he wasn’t wearing. His eyes widened and his mouth open
ed as if to stammer the beginnings of a denial. Then he spoilt the whole campaign by smiling.
“Ah, L-lady T-t-t-timms,” he said. “I w-w-wonder if I c-c-could have a few w-w-words with you.”
“I want to know who ordered you to follow me here.”
“N-no one did. It was my own i-i-idea. B-but when I saw you t-t-talking to Jones I thought I’d better w-w-wait a bit.”
He was a bit under six foot, blond and pink and very slight. He looked as though he ought to have grown a footling pale moustache to demonstrate a minimal masculinity, but he hadn’t. His hair was cut quite short. His stammer was natural.
“Aren’t you one of Superintendent Austen’s men?” she said.
He shook his head.
“Then why the hell are you following me about?”
“I w-wanted to talk to you away from the p-police. It’s about Jones.”
“I don’t know anybody called Jones.”
“That c-can’t be true, if you think about it. Besides, I saw you t-talking to him. The big Indian in the w-white car.”
“His name’s Jack Ambrose.”
“Sorry. Yes, it’s that, too. And A-ambrose Jones. Do you know what his job is?”
“Something to do with criminal rehabilitation, I believe. He works for a Council of some sort.”
“I d-don’t know what they call themselves now. I suppose it is a s-sort of rehabilitation—but it isn’t like that at all, Lady Timms. Jones is a f-f-frightener.”
The Lively Dead Page 14