Confirm or Deny

by Graham Ison

  “Okay. You might be able to get some help from the vetting people, although they’re a bit funny about releasing any of their stuff; all highly personal and confidential, but the fact that Hodder’s dead now might make a difference.”

  “No thanks,” said Tipper. “I’ve met some of them; my old guv’nor’s in that lot, and he was as thick as two short planks. No, I’ll do it myself, then I’ll know it’s done properly.”

  “Where are you going to start, Harry?”

  “From right here, and work backwards.”

  “There’s only one problem. You’ll never be able to make local enquiries in the village where she lives; not and get away without her knowing.”

  Tipper gently pulled down one of his lower eyelids with a forefinger. “I know a few tricks, guv’nor; stand on me.”

  *

  There was an air of confidence about the way that Caroline Farrell strode into the room. Gaffney put her age at about thirty, and he was sure that she regarded her tweed skirt, jumper and flat shoes as sensible; and that the absence of make-up and the no-nonsense hair-style were exactly right for the office.

  “I understand that you wish to speak to me?” She gazed at the two policemen haughtily, as though they were an unnecessary interruption in her day’s schedule. Gaffney had decided to interview the girl on the grounds that a man’s secretary was nearly as close to her boss as his wife; in some cases, much closer.

  “Miss Farrell?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is ‘miss’, is it?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Please sit down. I wanted to have a chat with you about Geoffrey Hodder.”

  “I see.”

  “For how long were you his secretary, Miss Farrell?”

  “Five years,” she said without hesitation. She sat upright, tensed, as though she didn’t intend wasting too much time on this business.

  “We – Chief Inspector Tipper and I – are investigating his death.” She nodded. “So far we do not have a satisfactory explanation for it.”

  “And you think I can help?” She spoke with what Tipper described as a cut-glass accent.

  “I’m hoping that you may be able to shed a little light on his character. I gather that he was a rather secretive sort of person; kept himself very much to himself?”

  She glanced from Gaffney to Tipper and back again. “I would not have thought that strange, considering his job.”

  “I’m not talking about professional reticence; that goes without saying. No, I mean as an individual. Some people are very outgoing, but don’t betray any secrets for all that—”

  “You’re not suggesting that Mr Hodder betrayed any secrets, surely, are you?” She looked suitably shocked and Gaffney realized that to attack a secretary’s boss was one sure way to be denied any assistance.

  “Not at all.” He would have liked a cigar, but was pretty certain that smoking would not meet with the girl’s approval. “I don’t know how much you knew about the work he was engaged in…”

  “Just about everything,” she said. “I was his secretary.” There was a distinct edge of hostility in her voice.

  “Miss Farrell, please don’t misunderstand my motives. I am not out to attack Mr Hodder, just to discover the reason for his untimely death.”

  “I still don’t see how I can help,” she said, but sounded slightly mollified.

  “Well to start with, we don’t know the cause of his death—”

  “D’you mean there hasn’t been a post-mortem examination?”

  “Yes, there has,” said Gaffney patiently, “but the pathologist is undecided as to the cause, at least until he has made further tests.”

  “D’you mean he might have been murdered?” A little of the cool reserve slipped.

  “It is a possibility, yes.” Gaffney was becoming quite good at lying about Hodder’s suicide.

  “Good heavens,” she said in exactly the way that she might have taken the news that her old school had just lost an important hockey match.

  Gaffney did not want her speculating on who might have killed Hodder; he was more interested in what had driven him to take his own life. Gently, he steered her back. “Did he seem at all depressed in recent weeks?”

  She played briefly with a garnet ring on the middle finger of her right hand. “Yes,” she said.

  Gaffney waited until it became apparent that she was not going to expand on that, at least not voluntarily. “In what way?” he asked.

  “Just wasn’t himself. Didn’t seem to have the sparkle any more.”

  It seemed a strange word to use in respect of Hodder. “Am I to deduce from that that he was quite a lively character then?”

  For the first time since the interview had begun, she smiled; it transformed her whole face, and Gaffney noticed how attractive her brown eyes were. “I wouldn’t have said lively, no.” She paused again. “But he was a very compassionate man; very sympathetic.”

  “To everybody?”

  “Oh no. In fact, he always gave the impression of being a little austere, particularly with his staff; the officers on his section, I mean. I think that they were a bit afraid of him. He was very demanding, and he didn’t tolerate inefficiency. I’ve seen him get very cross when something’s gone wrong.”

  “Like the Dickson affair?”

  “Exactly; and Nikitin and Gesschner, too.”

  “Oh, you know about those.”

  “Naturally. I was his secretary, as I said. A man doesn’t have any secrets from his secretary.”

  Gaffney took a leap into the unknown. “You’d know about his marital problems, and his affairs with other women, then?”

  He had expected a scandalized rebuttal, but she remained quite calm. “Yes,” she said, “and I’m probably the only one here who did.” She glanced quickly at Tipper before realigning her gaze on Gaffney. “I hope that what I’m saying is in the strictest confidence,” she said. “I’m only telling you now because he’s dead, and it might help you to find out…” She let the sentence tail off.

  Gaffney decided that there was no harm in giving that assurance; Hodder was beyond the clutches of the vetting people now. “In the strictest confidence, Miss Farrell.” He knew that if he had to breach that promise at some time in the future, he would just shrug his shoulders and get on with it; there wasn’t much honor or morality in criminal investigation.

  “He’d been married before, you know.”

  “So I understand.”

  “His first wife used to work here, before my time, of course. Then he got married to Julia, that’s his present wife.” She stopped and looked momentarily sad. “His widow, I suppose she is now.” Gaffney nodded. “But that marriage was no more successful than the first…”

  “He told you that, did he?”

  “Not at first, but I could work it out—”

  “Just a minute, Miss Farrell. You say you were his secretary for five years.” She nodded. “So that when you started, he’d already been married for five years or so, for the second time.”

  “That’s right. It was just after I came here that it started to get a bit rocky, so I gather.”

  “And that was when he told you, was it?”

  “No. Not immediately.”

  “Forgive me for asking, but why should he tell you at all? With respect, you were only his secretary.”

  She smiled with a schoolmistress-like tolerance. “Some men will confide in their secretaries, when they will tell no one else. He was such a man, I suppose.”

  “But so soon after your appointment?”

  There was a silence for some time, and again she played absently with the garnet ring. Eventually, she looked up. “I was one of his affairs,” she said softly.

  “I see.” Gaffney left it at that, hoping that she would explain in her own time. He was fascinated that a man with a wife who looked like Julia Hodder should be attracted to this plain girl sitting opposite him.

  “He asked me to go to the theater with him o
ne day. He’d got two tickets apparently and was intending to take his wife, but she cried off. She rang him – I put the call through – and said that she didn’t feel like going, and he should go on his own—”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “No, but Geoffrey told me afterwards that’s what she’d said. Anyway, he said it would be a shame to waste the ticket, and asked me if I’d like to go. He said he’d quite understand if I said no.”

  “But you went?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “It was a play I particularly wanted to see, but couldn’t get tickets for.”

  “And that was all, was it? You just went to the theater with him?”

  “That was all then, yes. There was nothing romantic about it. We had a drink and a sandwich in a pub before the play started; I remember that because it was dirty and crowded. We had to eat our sandwiches standing up and wedged in a corner, and he kept apologizing. He said that if he’d known he’d have booked a table at a restaurant.”

  “Funny thing to say, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t see why.”

  “Well if he had been intending to take his wife with him, surely he’d have done that anyway.”

  “He mentioned that. He said they didn’t bother. They always had supper when they got home.”

  “Did you go out with him often after that?”

  “No, not really. Five or six times, I suppose. Then it all came to a rather unsatisfactory end.”

  “Oh?”

  “The next time – after the visit to the theater, I mean – he took me out for a meal. He said it was to make up for eating in a pub, before. But it was the time after that he really opened up. He told me all about his first wife, and what a bitch she’d been, and how he’d met his second wife. He told me all about the divorce too.”

  “How long ago was all this, Miss Farrell?”

  “Two years ago, I should think.” She paused. “Yes, that would be about right.”

  “What did he say about his second wife?”

  “I know it sounds hackneyed, but he said that his wife didn’t understand him. They had little in common, it seemed; no mutual interests—”

  “What were his interests?”

  “Well the theater, obviously, and music. He liked going to concerts, but she couldn’t stand them. He also said that he thought that she might be having an affair, and he didn’t know what to do about it.”

  Gaffney smiled. He was always amused by his own sex. He had met several men who thought it quite acceptable to have affairs but who regarded it as downright treachery if their wives did the same thing. “And all this was two years ago, was it?”

  “That’s when it started, yes.”

  “And when did it end? You said that it did?”

  “Yes. It happened one evening, after another visit to the theater. He took me home to my flat, in his car, and I invited him in for a drink—”

  “Was that the first time you’d invited him in?”

  “No. Probably about the second or third time. We were sitting down talking about something or other – I can’t rightly remember now – when quite suddenly he asked me if I’d go to bed with him.” She looked away, her face reddening, not with the embarrassment of the proposition, but in its telling.

  “What did you do?”

  “I dropped my drink. It was a silly thing to do; I was so… I was going to say shocked, but I wasn’t. Quite honestly, I’d been expecting something like that to happen, but not as suddenly as that. There was nothing romantic about it; no soft lights and sweet music. He might just as well have been asking me if I wanted another drink, or if I’d take dictation.”

  It was clear that she had not intended an innuendo in that last remark, and Gaffney kept a straight face. “And did you sleep with him?”

  “No. I asked him to leave…” She broke off, searching Gaffney’s face for some trace of censure or cynicism. “This is all very embarrassing, you know.”

  “And was that the end of it?”

  “Yes. I suddenly realized what I was getting into. I’d always been critical of girls who had affairs with their married bosses, and there I was on the brink of doing the same thing. And yet, the funny thing is that I might have done if he hadn’t asked me straight out like that; it was so cold, so matter-of-fact. It made me feel sick, quite honestly; I didn’t feel proud of myself and it was worse when I analyzed it. I knew that that was what I’d been working towards. Afterwards, when I thought about it, over and over again, I knew that deep down I had wanted it to happen, wanted to go to bed with him. Then I realized that there was nothing in it of any permanence; he was into his second marriage, and probably it was his fault, not his wife’s – either of his wives – and that I’d nearly become yet another girl he’d been to bed with.”

  “Didn’t that make life difficult for you in the office? You remained his secretary, obviously, and had to work with him every day, just as if nothing had happened.”

  She nodded. “Yes,” she said, “And that was exactly what did happen. He never referred to it again. Never asked me out. Nothing. It was just as if we had never been out together anywhere. I was all set to ask for a transfer, but eventually I didn’t bother.”

  “And he didn’t apologize?”

  “No, not a word.” She looked serious. “I suppose he thought that I was the one who ought to be doing the apologizing.”

  “You said earlier that you were one of his affairs. Was that a figure of speech, or did he have other women friends?”

  “Oh yes. I didn’t know for certain, but you can tell. When someone rings up and he’s not here, a secretary will usually say something like, I’ll get him to ring you, and take a number. The women in a man’s life will never do that. They’ll say it doesn’t matter and that they’ll ring later, but they’ll never leave a name or a number.”

  “I see,” said Gaffney, and thought it as well that chief superintendents didn’t have secretaries. “You don’t know who any of these women were, then?”

  She hesitated, thinking. “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “Have none of them telephoned since his death?”

  “Only one; the current one, I suppose you’d call her.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I just told her that Mr Hodder had died.”

  “What was the reaction?”

  “Complete silence. She didn’t say another word, just rang off.”

  “And she’s not telephoned since?”

  “No.”

  “Miss Farrell, you said earlier that Geoffrey Hodder was a compassionate and sympathetic man.” She nodded. “And yet his treatment of you after your abortive affair didn’t seem like that; he ignored it, you say; made no reference to it.”

  She smiled wistfully. “You have to know Geoffrey to understand that sort of reaction. I think he was too embarrassed to mention it. I think he realized that he’d embarrassed me, and didn’t know quite how to deal with the situation. It was very awkward, when you think about it; me still working as his secretary, if you see what I mean.”

  “But he straightaway got himself involved with another woman, if your deduction about the phone calls is correct…”

  “Yes, but I don’t blame him for that. I think he was a man who needed women; not just for sex, but for companionship. He seemed to like talking to women, being with them. From what he said about Julia, she wasn’t much of a wife to him.”

  “Did he ever mention her after you and he stopped seeing each other – outside the office, I mean?”

  She smiled. “I know what you mean. No; that was the end of confidences of that sort. As I said before, it was just as though that little interlude hadn’t occurred.” She relaxed slightly and crossed her legs. “I suppose I was a bit hard on him.”

  “Hard?”

  “Yes. Throwing him out like that. I should have been a little more sympathetic, I suppose, but… It was so gauche, just coming straight out with it like that; a bald proposi
tion.”

  “It strikes me, Miss Farrell, from what you’ve been saying, that Geoffrey Hodder was one of those men who incited sympathy.”

  She thought about that for a while. “Yes, I suppose he was. Women tended to feel sorry for him; they wanted to mother him. But then, every once in a while, you could see a streak of hardness in him that negated it.”

  “Such as?”

  “The Dickson thing. He was absolutely furious that it had gone wrong. And obviously worried; worried sick.”

  “What was the reaction of his team? People like Hughes and Selby and the others?”

  “They generally seemed quite concerned, but only because of his uncharacteristic anger, I think. Not that you can ever tell with Mr Selby, of course.”

  “Why of course?”

  “He’s a strange one. Never seems to have anything in common with anyone else in the office – a bit reclusive, really.”

  “What did Geoffrey think of him, do you know?”

  She shook her head. “No, Geoffrey was very loyal to his people. He would never criticize them to anyone else.”

  “Was Geoffrey angry with you? I mean did it spill over, this anger?”

  “No. He was never angry with me, but then I was just a secretary. But you could tell. He didn’t go out of the office for a day or two after Dickson went missing. And every time he walked up the corridor or went to the loo, he would ask, as soon as he got back, if the Director-General had phoned. To be perfectly honest, I think he was expecting to get the sack.”

  “Did he drink much?” asked Gaffney, recalling what he had heard about Hodder’s life-style before, in the army.

  “Not that I know of,” she said. “Certainly not in the office; no one does. But when we went out, he usually just had a gin and tonic, and a glass or so of wine with a meal. I’ve never seen him the worse for drink, but then I wouldn’t expect to; it wasn’t really in his character.”

  “Even when the Dickson case went wrong?”

  “No,” she said, “Not even then.”

  “Did you ever meet Julia Hodder, Miss Farrell?”

  “Only once. I was in Harrods one Saturday morning, doing some Christmas shopping. It was just before Christmas—” She broke off with a smile, “It would be really, wouldn’t it?”