Orchestrated Death

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘But it’s too late for the hedgerows I knew,’ he said. He turned his head for an instant to look at her. Her eyes, which he had thought were plain brown, he now saw were richly tapestried in gold and tawny and russet, glowing in the sunlight. ‘That’s the terrible thing about my job,’ he added. ‘By its very nature, almost everything I do is done too late.’

  ‘If it makes you so unhappy, why do you do it?’ she asked, as people had asked before, as he had asked himself.

  ‘Because it would be worse if I didn’t,’ he said.

  * * *

  Simon Thompson lived in a flat in the Newington Green Road, where people lived who couldn’t yet quite afford Islington. It was above a butcher’s shop and must, Atherton thought, be one of the last furnished flats in the world. He walked up the dark and dirty stairs to the first floor and stopped before the gimcrack, cardboard door with the sticky-paper label. The stairs went on upward, more sordidly than ever, and a smell of nappies and burnt fat slid down them towards him.

  Thompson opened the door violently at the first knock as though he had been crouched behind it listening to the footfalls. On the phone he had sounded nervous, protesting and consenting almost simultaneously. Presumably he was well aware that he was the person, after Joanna Marshall, who would be presumed to have been closest to Anne-Marie Austen.

  ‘Sergeant Atherton.’ He stated rather than asked. ‘Come in. I don’t know why you want to speak to me. I don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘Don’t you, sir?’ Atherton said peacefully, following Thompson into a flat so perilously untidy that it would have taken a properties-buyer a month at least to recreate it for a television serial.

  ‘In here,’ Thompson said, and they entered what was evidently the sitting-room. There was a massive and ancient sofa, around which the flat had probably been built in the first place, and a set of mutually intolerant chairs and tables. A hi-fi system occupied one wall, incongruously new and expensive, and at least answering the question as to what Thompson spent his income on. It seemed to have everything, including a compact-disc player, and was ranked with a huge collection of records, tapes and discs, and a pair of speakers like black refrigerators.

  Everything else in the room was swamped with a making tide of clothes, newspapers, sheet music, empty bottles, dirty crockery, books, correspondence, empty record sleeves, apple cores, crumpled towels, and overflowing ashtrays. The windows were swathed in net so dirty it was at first glance invisible. Curtains lay folded, and evidently laundered, on the windowsill waiting to be rehung, but even from where he stood Atherton could see the thick film of dust on them.

  ‘I hardly knew her, you know,’ Thompson said defensively as soon as they were inside. He turned to face Atherton. He was a small and slender young man of ripe and theatrical good looks. His hair was dark and glossy and a little too carefully styled, his skin expensively tanned, his eyes large and blue with long curly lashes. His features were delicately pretty, his mouth full and petulant, his teeth white as only capping or cosmetic toothpaste could make them. He wore a ring on each hand and a heavy gold bracelet on his right wrist. His left wrist was weighed down with the sort of watch usually called a chronometer, which was designed to do everything except make toast, and would operate under water to a depth of three nautical miles.

  He was the sort of man who would infallibly appeal to a certain kind of woman, who would equally infallibly be exploited by him. ‘Spoilt’, Atherton’s mother would have put it more simply. A mummy’s boy: all his life women had made a pet of him, and would continue to do so. Probably had elder sisters who’d liked dressing him up when he was a toddler and taking him out to show off to friends. He was also, Atherton noted, extremely nervous. His hands, held before him defensively, were never still, and there was a film of moisture on his deeply indented upper lip. His eyes flickered to Atherton’s and away again, like those of a man who knows that the corpse under the sofa is imperfectly concealed, and fears that a foot may be sticking out at one end.

  ‘May I sit down?’ Atherton said, digging himself out a space at the end of the sofa and sitting in it quickly before the tide of junk could flow back in. ‘It’s purely a matter of routine, sir, nothing to worry about. We have to talk to everyone who might be able to help us.’

  ‘But I hardly knew her,’ Thompson said again, perching himself on the arm of the chair opposite, with the air of being ready to run.

  Atherton smiled. ‘No-one seems to have known her well, from what we’re told, but you must have known her better than the rest. After all, you did have an affair with her, didn’t you?’

  He licked his lips. ‘Someone told you that, did they?’ He leaned forward confidentially. ‘Look here, I’ve got nothing to hide. I went to bed with her a couple of times, that’s all. It happens all the time on tour. It doesn’t mean anything. Anyone will tell you that.’

  ‘Will they, sir?’ Atherton was writing notes, and Thompson took the bait like a lamb. Lamb-bait?

  ‘Yes, of course. It wasn’t serious. She and I had a bit of fun, just while we were on tour. So did lots of people. It ends when we get back on the plane to come home. That’s the way it’s played. But then when we got home she started to pretend it had been serious, and saying I’d promised to marry her.’

  ‘And had you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he cried in frustration. ‘I never said anything like that. And she kept hanging around me and it was really embarrassing. Then when I told her to get lost, she said she’d make me sorry, and tried to make trouble with my girlfriend -’

  ‘Oh, you have a girlfriend, then, have you sir?’

  Thompson looked sulky. ‘She knew about that from the beginning, Anne-Marie I mean. So she knew it wasn’t serious. Helen and I have been together for six years now. We’ve been living together for two years. Anne-Marie knew that. She threatened to tell Helen about – well, about the tour.’ His indignation had driven out his nervousness now. ‘It would’ve really killed Helen, and she knew it, the bitch. And when she first joined, I thought she was such a nice girl. But underneath all that baby-face business, she was a nasty piece of work.’

  Atherton listened sympathetically, while his mind whirled at Thompson’s double standards. ‘And did she in fact tell your girlfriend?’

  ‘Well, no, fortunately she never did. She phoned a couple of times, and then put the phone down when Helen answered. And she kept hanging around me in the bar during concerts and saying things in front of Helen, suggestive things, you know. Well, Helen’s very understanding, but there are some things a girl can’t stand. But she gave it up in the end, thank God.’

  Atherton turned a page. ‘Can I have some dates from you, sir? You first met Anne-Marie when?’

  ‘In July, when she joined.’

  ‘You hadn’t known her before? I believe she was at the Royal College?’

  ‘I went to the Guildhall. No, I hadn’t come across her before. I think she worked out of London.’

  ‘And then you went on tour together – when?’

  ‘In August, to Athens, and then to Italy in October.’

  ‘Did you – sleep together on both tours?’

  ‘Well, yes. I mean – yes, we did.’ He looked embarrassed for once, perhaps realising that the return engagement might be construed as having aroused expectations.

  ‘And it was when you came back from Italy that she started “making trouble for you”?’

  Thompson frowned. ‘Well, no, not immediately. At first it was all right, but after a week or so she suddenly started this business about marrying me.’

  ‘What made her change, do you think?’

  He began to sweat again. ‘I don’t know. She just -changed’

  ‘Is there anything you said or did that might have made her think you wanted to go on seeing her?’

  ‘No! No, nothing I swear it! I’m happy with Helen. I didn’t want anyone else. It was just meant to be while we were on tour, and I never said anything about marrying her.’
He lifted anxious eyes to Atherton’s face, passive victim looking at his torturer.

  ‘After that session at the Television Centre on the fifteenth of January – what did you do?’

  ‘I came home.’

  ‘You didn’t go for a drink with any of your friends?’

  ‘No, I – I was going to go with Phil Redcliffe, but he was going with Joanna and Anne-Marie, and I wanted to avoid her. So I just went home.’

  ‘Straight home?’

  There was a faint hesitation. ‘Well, I just went for a drink first at a local pub, round here.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Steptoes. It’s my regular.’

  ‘They know you there, do they? They’d remember you coming in that night?’

  He looked hunted. ‘I don’t know. It was pretty crowded. I don’t know if they’d remember.’

  ‘Did you speak to anyone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re sure of that, are you? You went to a pub for a drink and didn’t speak to anyone?’

  ‘I – no, I didn’t. I just had a drink and came home.’

  ‘What time did you get home?’

  Again the slight hesitation. ‘I don’t know exactly. About half past ten or eleven o’clock, I think.’

  ‘Your girlfriend will be able to confirm that, I suppose.’

  Thompson looked wretched. ‘She wasn’t here. She was at work. She’s on nights.’

  ‘She’s a shift-worker?’

  ‘She’s a theatre nurse at St Thomas’s.’

  Atherton’s heart sang, but he betrayed no emotion. He wrote it down and said without pausing, ‘So no-one saw you at the pub, and no-one saw you come home?’

  Thompson burst out, ‘I didn’t kill her! I wouldn’t. I’m not that type. I wouldn’t have the courage, for God’s sake! Ask anyone. I had nothing to do with it. You must believe me.’

  Atherton only smiled. ‘It isn’t my business to believe or not believe, sir.’ He had found that calling young men ‘sir’ a lot unsettled them. ‘I just have to ask these questions, as a matter of routine. What sort of car do you drive, sir?’

  He looked startled. ‘Car? It’s a maroon Alfa Spyder. Why d’you want to know about my car?’

  ‘Just routine. Downstairs, is it?’

  ‘No, Helen’s borrowed it – hers is being serviced.’

  ‘And your young lady’s full name, sir.’

  ‘Helen Morris. Look, she won’t have to know about – you won’t tell her about – on tour and all that, will you?’

  Atherton looked stern. ‘Not if I don’t have to, sir. But this is a murder enquiry.’

  Thompson subsided unhappily, and did not think to ask what that meant. A few moments later Atherton was in his own Sierra and driving away, mentally rubbing his hands. He’s lying, he thought, and he’s scared shitless – now we only have to find out what about. And best of all, the girlfriend is a theatre nurse. A much more promising lead, he thought, even than the Brown one.

  The Lodge, Stourton-on-Fosse, had evidently never been anyone’s lodge, and from the look of it Slider deduced that if Anne-Marie had been poor, it was not hereditary. It was an elegant, expensive, neo-classical villa, built in the Thirties of handsome red brick, with white pillars and porticoes and green shutters. Its grounds were extensive and immaculate, with a gravelled drive leading from the white five-barred gate which looked as though it had been raked with a fine-toothed comb and weeded with tweezers.

  ‘Crikey,’ said Joanna weakly as they drove slowly past the gate to have a look.

  ‘Is that all you can say about it?’

  ‘It’s the smell of money making me feel faint. I never knew she came from this sort of background.’

  ‘You said it was a large house in the village.’

  ‘Yes, but I was thinking of a four-bed, double-fronted Edwardian villa, the sort of thing that goes for a hundred and fifty thousand in North Acton. You need practice to imagine anything as rich as this.’

  ‘Did she never give any hint that there was money in the family?’

  ‘Nary a one. She lived in a crummy sort of bedsit – oh, you’ve seen it, of course – and as far as I know, she lived off what she earned in the Orchestra. She never mentioned private income or rich relatives. Perhaps she was proud.’

  ‘You said she didn’t get on with her aunt.’

  ‘I said I got that impression. She didn’t say so in so many words.’ Slider stopped the car and turned it in a farm gateway. ‘Are you going to drive in?’

  ‘On that gravel? I wouldn’t dare. No, I’ll park out in the lane.’

  ‘Then I can wait for you in the car.’

  ‘I thought of that too.’

  ‘I bet you did.’ She leaned over and kissed him, short and full, on the mouth. He felt dizzy.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said unconvincingly. She kissed him again, more slowly, and when she stopped he said, ‘Now I’m going to have to walk up the drive with my coat held closed.’

  ‘I thought it would give you the courage to face people above your station,’ she said gravely.

  He pushed her hand away and wriggled out, leaning back in for one last kiss. ‘Be good,’ he said. ‘Bark if anyone comes.’

  An elderly maid or housekeeper opened the door to him and showed him into a drawing-room handsomely furnished with antiques, a thick, washed-Chinese carpet on the polished parquet, and heavy velvet curtains at the French windows. Just what he would have expected it to look like, judging from the outside. Left alone, he walked round the room a little, looking at the pictures. He didn’t know much about paintings, but judging by the frames these were expensive and old, and some of them were of horses. Everything was spotless and well polished, and the air smelled of lavender wax.

  He made a second circuit, examining the ornaments this time, and noting that there were no photographs, not even on the top of the piano, which he thought unusual for a house of this sort, and particularly for an aunt of her generation. It was a remarkably impersonal room, revealing nothing but that there had been, at some point in the family’s history, a lot of money.

  He perched on the edge of a slippery, brocade sofa, and then the door opened and two Cairn terriers shot in yapping hysterically, closely followed by a white toy poodle, its coat stained disagreeably brown around eyes and anus. Slider drew back his feet as the terriers darted alternately at them, while the poodle stood and glared, its muzzle drawn back to show its yellow teeth in a continuous rattling snarl.

  Mrs Ringwood followed them in. ‘Boys, boys,’ she admonished them, without conviction. ‘They’ll be quite all right if you just ignore them.’

  Slider, doubting it, regarded Anne-Marie’s aunt with astonishment. He had been expecting a stout and ample aunt, a tightly-coiffeured termagant; but Mrs Ringwood, though in her late fifties, was small and very slim, with bright golden hair cut in an Audrey Hepburn urchin. Her jewellery was expensively chunky, her clothes so fashionable that Slider had seen nothing remotely like them in the high street. She sat opposite him angularly, her thin legs crossed high up, her heavy bracelets rattling down her arms like shackles. The whole impression was so girlish that unless one saw her face, one would have thought her in her twenties.

  Slider began by offering his condolences, though Mrs Ringwood showed no sign of needing or welcoming them.

  ‘It must have been a terrible shock to you,’ he persisted, ‘and I’m sorry to have to intrude on you at such a moment.’

  ‘You must do your job, of course,’ she conceded reluctantly. ‘Though I may as well tell you at once that Anne-Marie and I were not close. We had no great affection for one another.’

  Didn’t anyone like the poor creature? Slider thought, while saying aloud, ‘It’s very frank of you to tell me so, ma’am.’

  ‘I would not like anything to hamper your investigation. I think it better to be open with you from the beginning. You believe she was murdered, I understand?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘It se
ems very unlikely. How could a girl like that have enemies? However, you know best I suppose.’

  ‘You brought Miss Austen up from childhood, I believe?’

  ‘I was made responsible for her when my sister died,’ Mrs Ringwood said, making it clear that there was a world of difference. ‘I was the child’s only close relative, so it was expected that I should become responsible for her, and I accepted that. But I did not think myself qualified – or obliged – to become a second mother to her. I sent her to a good boarding school, and in the holidays she lived here under the charge of a governess. I did my duty by her.’

  ‘It must have been something of a financial burden to you,’ Slider tried. ‘School fees and so on.’

  She looked at him shrewdly. ‘Anne-Marie’s school fees and living expenses were paid for out of the trust. Her grandfather – my father – was a very wealthy man. It was he who built this house. Rachel – Anne-Marie’s mother – and I were brought up here, and of course we expected to share his estate when he died. But Rachel married without his approval, and he disowned her and left everything to me, except for the amount left in trust for Anne-Marie’s upbringing. So you see I suffered no personal expense in the matter.’

  ‘Anne-Marie was the only child of the marriage?’

  Mrs Ringwood assented.

  ‘And when she finished school, what happened then?’

  ‘She went to the Royal College of Music in London to study the violin. It was the only thing she had ever shown any interest in, and for that reason I encouraged her. I insisted that she could not remain here doing nothing, which I’m afraid was what she wanted to do. She was always a lazy child, giving to mooning about and daydreaming. I told her she must earn her own living and not look to me to keep her. So she did three years at the College, and then went to the Birmingham Municipal Orchestra, and took a flat in Birmingham. The rest I’m sure you know.’

  ‘How much did you know about her life in London?’

  ‘Nothing at all. I rarely go to London, and when I do I shop and take lunch with an old friend. I never visited her there.’