A Fatal Attachment

by Robert Barnard

  “He’s the main beneficiary,” Charlie pointed out. “A man who’s spent his life getting together money for expeditions, treks, survival schemes.”

  “All right, all right. Point taken. But remember, Oliver Marwick said there was a sort of question in the way she said it.”

  “I know. As if she was sort of bewildered. So maybe someone who looked like Robert, but who she realised wasn’t.”

  “Could be. Another possibility. Let’s not get ourselves into any preconceived position before he arrives.”

  “Fine by me,” said Charlie amiably. “Let’s talk about the weather. Or the Yorkshire Cricket Club. Why are people at the Yorkshire Cricket Club always screaming and fighting each other?”

  “Ask me again when we have the whole evening. It’s a bit like the Church of England: it all goes back a long way, and has something to do with theology. Ah now—is this our man?”

  A blue car had drawn up in the opening outside the cottage gates. A man got out, opened the gate, closed it carefully, then strode towards the cottage. The impression that this was a young man came from his extreme leanness, and his general air of being in excellent condition.

  “Let him in,” said Mike Oddie to Holdsworth. “Then you can scoot off for an hour or two.”

  When Robert Loxton was shown in Charlie could see that the air of youth was deceptive. The dark hair was streaked with grey, there were wrinkles gathering about the eyes, and the neck was becoming scraggy in that tell-tale way that always marks out ageing people who have hitherto had an air of youth. A very vital, energetic, impressive figure none the less. And one, Charlie noted from the concentration of tan around the nose, eyes and forehead, and lack of it around the chin and cheeks, who had recently shaved off a beard. But that was only to be expected, of course, in one who had recently emerged from four months in the wilds of Alaska.

  “Robert Loxton,” he said, coming forward and shaking hands with both of them. “This is a dreadful business. I heard it in Washington. At a press conference—the damnedest way to hear. I flew straight here.”

  Oddie introduced himself and Charlie, and gestured to a chair.

  “No thanks. I’ve been sitting on a plane, sitting in the driving seat of a car.” He began striding up and down the small study. Charlie felt that any room would seem too small for him, and that perhaps this was an impression he liked to give. “Was it here that it was done?”

  “Yes,” said Oddie, feeling it was Loxton who was commanding the situation rather than himself, but deciding to leave it that way for a bit. “She was on the telephone, or so we think.”

  “Poor Lydia. What a damned . . . inappropriate way to go.”

  “Yes.” Oddie nodded his agreement. “We have the impression of a well-organised, rather conservative, rather cool lady—would you agree with that?”

  “I think so. If you’re talking about the Lydia of today—or rather yesterday.” He grinned suddenly, revealing brilliant, even teeth. “Lydia and I once ‘had something going,’ as they say these days. She wasn’t so cool then.”

  “What went wrong?”

  “Nothing exactly went wrong. We just had different ideas. To slide from one cliché to another: she wanted greater commitment than I was willing to give. Or, as we would have put it, she stuck out for marriage and I wasn’t interested in that. She went off and married my brother Jamie, and that was a disaster. That, I suppose, was the basis of Lydia’s coolness.”

  “But you remained fond of her?”

  “Oh immensely. We didn’t see each other often—”

  “How often?”

  “I suppose every year or two, though sometimes it could go longer than that. It rather depended on how long I had between expeditions, and whether I was raising money in this country or abroad. But we’d try and meet up, generally in London, and if we couldn’t we’d have a long natter on the phone.”

  “And of course she made you her heir.”

  “Yes. Not very long after Gavin died.”

  “And you knew this?”

  “Oh yes. She told me. I didn’t tell anyone much, but I’m pretty sure I told my father. It was always a long shot—likely to come to me, if at all, long after I could put it to any good use.”

  “You mention meeting in London. Did you often come here? Did you have a key?”

  “Good Lord, no. I’ve only been here once—no, twice—in my life. Last time was—oh, about six or seven years ago, when I happened to be in Leeds. That was too soon after Gavin’s death to be a really happy occasion. . . . So you think whoever did it may have had a key, do you? That should narrow the field a bit. But I’m afraid I’ve never had one. And I very much doubt whether Jamie had one either.”

  “Oh?”

  “It was several years after the marriage that Lydia bought this place.”

  “Why do you mention your brother?” Charlie asked.

  “Well, I imagined you’d be looking at him—ex-husband and all that.”

  “You knew he was back in the district?”

  “Is he? No, I didn’t, actually.” He patted his jacket. “I’ve got a letter from him somewhere, but I haven’t got around to reading it. I must say, quite apart from the key, there’s no way I can see my kid brother committing murder.”

  “He seems, in fact, to have a pretty good alibi,” said Oddie. “Though we’re not one hundred per cent sure about the time of the murder. Of course his involvement with Lydia Perceval was very early on, like your own. You must have noticed changes in her over the years, sir.”

  “Yes . . . Yes, I suppose I did. Seeing her at intervals, sometimes long intervals, one did notice the way she was changing.” He came to rest by the desk, and sat on it, looking at the policemen straight. “I should say that I always thought Lydia a very remarkable person. She knew what she wanted and she went for it. I like that. Notice that all the early books were of popular figures—Nelson, Lawrence of Arabia, people like that. Then when she had established herself, got a faithful readership, she could branch out on to less glamorous figures that she felt really needed treatment. Who was she writing about when she died?”

  “Charles the tenth of France.”

  “There you are. Who’s heard of him? But the book would have sold, because she’d built up a trusting readership in the course of her writing life, people who knew she would make the story interesting. Her Byron was one of the books we took with us to Mount McKinley: wonderfully entertaining. She liked men with a spark of the devil in them. She also liked achievers, as you may have guessed. I remember once suggesting to her that she do Scott of the Antarctic, and she waved a hand in the way she had and said that heroic failures were for other people: the British loved them but she didn’t. . . . What I’m saying is that I admired her, but that there were one or two negative aspects that emerged over the years.”

  “In particular?”

  Robert Loxton had resumed his energetic march around the study, and now stopped by the door.

  “I was always a bit dubious about her attitude to people. I sometimes wondered—this may sound egotistical, chauvinistic, even—if it was the lack of a satisfying marriage that caused her to . . . use people. Quite unconsciously, and in the nicest possible way, she attached people to her, if she thought it worthwhile to. And she’d take them over and use them. If they became no longer useful to her, she’d detach herself, very kindly, very gradually. You’d hardly notice it, but you’d no longer be part of her world.”

  “Is that what happened with the nephews?”

  “Maurice and Gavin? Partly. But it was more complex than that. There was genuine love there—especially with Gavin. Of course I only know about this from Lydia’s point of view. I’ve very seldom met Andy and Thea in the last twenty or thirty years, and when I have it’s been on a purely social level. But even just hearing about it from Lydia’s point of view I could see the dangers.”

  “What were they, do you think?”

  “She loved them, but she was using them too—to live out
her own dreams and fantasies, to do some of the things she couldn’t do but would have loved to do. There is a sort of inbuilt irony about being a writer who deals with heroic and glamorous or even grandly sinful figures, isn’t there? So Gavin was to be the glamorous serviceman, and Maurice was to save the country politically.”

  “Ah—we hadn’t heard that.”

  “This was in the seventies, when politically everything was a bit tatty and unsatisfactory. When the Conservative Party was taken over by yuppies whose idea of glory was a windfall killing on the stock exchange she lost interest. Recently she’d just waved politics aside—something beneath serious attention. But at one time Maurice was to be the nation’s saviour. I don’t think that ambition lasted very long. By all accounts she got Maurice wrong.”

  “Oh?” said Charlie. “What sort of a person is he?”

  “I don’t know, to be honest, what he is. But as a boy he seemed likely to grow up into rather a quiet figure: more Geoffrey Howe than Michael Heseltine. Anyway, from what I hear when he grew up he just went his own way. And Lydia simply moved him out of her life. But by then the damage was done.”

  “Damage? To Maurice?”

  “Maybe. I hardly know the man, as I said, though I believe he’s doing rather well in television. No—I was thinking about Andy and Thea. When Lydia took over somebody she hardly left room for anybody else. I tried to warn her, but in emotional matters Lydia could only see one viewpoint. Andy and Thea lost their sons, at least for a time . . . and one of them they lost for good.”

  “You . . . you think they hated her?”

  “I don’t know. But I know how I’d feel.”

  “Yes. . . .” Mike Oddie thought. “In fact there’s been a more recent case of Mrs Perceval moving in on other people’s lives.”

  “Oh?”

  “Two boys again. In the last few weeks of her life.”

  “And how did the parents feel about that?”

  “The mother’s very sick, which obviously helped the process on. The father was apparently delighted. Took the burden off his shoulders when the mother went into hospital. He gives the impression of not being a particularly perceptive man—unless he’s having us on. In any case the process was in its early days. No doubt it took a while until the Hoddles realized what was happening, and they seem very much brighter.”

  “I remember the Hoddles as a very nice couple.” He ceased abruptly from ranging up and down the room and sat down: long, lean, full of life and vitality. “Thinking back on what I’ve said, I may have been a bit hard on Lydia. I suppose when you find out someone’s been murdered you inevitably cast around for reasons. Lydia was a fine historian, a splendid writer; she was fun to be with, and good to be seen with. Her opinions were sensible, and she argued them well. I was always happy when we were going to have dinner together, and if I was uncertain about anything I’d always listen to what she had to say on the subject. I’ve no evidence that Thea and Andy resented her influence on their boys, and it sounds as if Maurice came to no permanent harm. If you could tell me she might have been killed by the good old passing vagrant or in the course of a house-breaking that’s the explanation I’d plump for.”

  “It’s still a possibility,” said Oddie neutrally. “But a shooting in the course of a break-in is a good deal more likely than a strangling. I don’t suppose you’d be any good at identifying anything that’s missing, sir?”

  “No use at all.” He looked round. “Nice place, nice furniture, a good feel to the place. But I remember practically nothing from my previous visits.”

  “What will you do with it?”

  “Put it on the market, or let it until the market perks up. Not a time for selling houses at the moment. I’m not the settling-down type, and when I’m forced into it it certainly won’t be in somewhere like Bly. I suppose there’s a pub in the place that takes visitors, is there? I don’t fancy sleeping in this place, and it doesn’t seem fair to plonk myself on Jamie, wherever he is.”

  “Yes, there’s a pub just down the hill. Purely as a formality, sir, could you tell me what you were doing at the time of the murder?”

  “Sure. You tell me the time of the murder.”

  “Say—it’s a distinct possibility—Monday at ten in the evening.”

  “Lord—what’s the time difference between here and Anchorage? I came via Washington, so I’m not too sure.”

  Oddie leaned over to the desk and dialled 155.

  “Nine hours behind GMT,” he said when he came back to them. “That’s ten because we’re on Summer Time.”

  “Right. Midday, then. We had a press conference starting at ten. There was a lot of interest, and I remember looking at my watch at half past eleven, when it was still going on. I should think it broke up a bit before twelve.”

  “Right. You’d got back to Anchorage the day before, had you?”

  “No, we got back on Friday. The weekend was a bad time for a press conference.”

  “And you were staying?—”

  “Officially at the Hilton. In fact there are certain . . . needs, that are not catered for by U.S. Army emergency rations.” He grinned. “Would you like her name and address?”

  “Please.”

  He took out a pen and notebook and wrote it down rapidly.

  “The phone number is from memory, but I think it’s right. It’s a girl I teamed up with when we were making all the preparations. Girls are hard to come by in Anchorage, so I made a date for when the four months were up. I went to the Hilton every day to collect messages, but most of the time I was with her.”

  “And later?”

  “Monday night I was with her. Then I took a late-night flight to Washington.”

  “Well, I think that will be enough, sir. Keep us informed where you are, will you? We’d rather you stayed in the area for a few days. Mrs Perceval’s solicitors are Marwick, Chester and Jones, in Halifax. I imagine we’ll be releasing the body fairly soon, so it should be possible to have the funeral next week.”

  Robert Loxton banged his forehead.

  “Oh God—the funeral! I suppose I’ll be expected to go. I didn’t even get to my own parents’ funerals, but since I’m the heir, and since I’m in this country. . . . Oh well, I’d better buy me a black tie.”

  “Did you resent your parents leaving everything to your brother, sir?” asked Oddie, looking straight at him as he stood by the door preparing to leave.

  “No, I did not.” He looked back at him, eyes sparkling in lean cheeks. “It was done after consultation with me. I’ve never had much difficulty raising money for what I want to do. They’d rather lost sympathy—or maybe just interest—over the years. So they wanted to leave it to Jamie as one last chance to settle down. I said: Right-ho. Go ahead. I may say I never thought it would become a police matter. And it’s not really, is it?”

  “Not so far as I know, sir. We won’t keep you.”

  Robert Loxton smiled briefly and strode out to his car. They watched him through the window. Oddie turned to Charlie.

  “Well?”

  “I bet if you phoned that number you’d get his woman friend.”

  Oddie raised his eyebrow.

  “Meaning?”

  “It was all too pat.”

  “He’d had her number with him four long months on Mount McKinley,” Oddie pointed out.

  “He doesn’t strike me as the type to moon over a telephone number in the frozen wastes. But what I meant was, it was all too pat, down to the supposed uncertainty about the number. He knew the number perfectly well.”

  “Yes . . . I think, you know, that when the crime is murder people begin acting from the moment that they hear about it. People close to the victim, even people quite distant as well. Perhaps it dates back to hanging, I don’t know. But as soon as he heard this chap probably said to himself: ‘When did it happen? Over the weekend I’ve got Karen Paulson to vouch for me. Then I gave a press conference, then I flew to Washington. . . .” And so on. It doesn’t mean he’s i
mplicated in any way. Everyone will have done the same. And remember he’s used to performing—for potential sponsors, in press conferences and so on.”

  “All the same,” said Charlie, “I think you should ask the Anchorage police to check the girlfriend out. And ask them to check the time of the press conference and the date very carefully.”

  “I shall. Are there any other eggs you wish to teach me to suck?”

  “No, grandma,” said Charlie, grinning. “He’s perfectly plausible and rather impressive, and you’re probably right he can have nothing to do with it. Why did he mention his brother, though, when he says he had no idea he was back in the neighbourhood?”

  “Yes, I wondered about that. You’re suggesting he wanted to draw him to our attention, even cast suspicion in that direction?”

  “Sounds rotten put like that. Maybe diffuse suspicion a bit. There was a lot of talk about the Hoddles resenting Lydia’s role without apparently any real knowledge to back it up. . . .” Charlie turned from the window and wandered over to the wall by the door. “I keep thinking about this picture.”

  Oddie turned round and came over.

  “The picture of George the Fifth and Nicholas the whatever-it-was?”

  “Yes. Like as two peas, like I said. How alike do you think they’d have been if they’d shaved their beards off?”

  CHAPTER 15

  CHARLIE Peace felt like a schoolboy who has been given an unexpected holiday. He felt the same sense of limitless possibilities open before him, the same feeling that he must not throw them away by squandering the time on irrelevancies. Mike Oddie had told him he would be tied up for much of the day on routine jobs, and had a visit to Marwick, Chester and Jones lined up for the afternoon. Charlie was free to do what he liked in the way of checking things that bothered him, talking to people on the fringes of the case.

  “But leave the Hoddles,” Oddie said. “He won’t be back from school until late afternoon, and we both of us should be there.”

  Charlie felt what sports writers call a surge of adrenalin. Co-operation, swapping of views, plans of campaign were all very well, but there is nothing quite like freedom.