An Air That Kills

by Andrew Taylor

  He didn’t stir in his chair and the rhythm of his breathing continued undisturbed.

  She raised her voice almost to a shout: ‘Father!’

  Nothing happened. Antonia glanced round the room and decided to move in a clockwise direction, reserving the bureau until last. She worked her way steadily round the walls. She opened drawers, peered into cupboards, rifled through the piles of papers, opened files and sorted through files of ancient accounts.

  One of the sideboard cupboards was devoted to the affairs of the local branch of the British Legion which took up so much space that the door would no longer close. There were many letters from all over the world, including a bundle from Aunt Maud in South Africa during the war; Antonia glanced at one or two of these and found references to herself: ‘Antonia is enjoying the typing course more than the shorthand. She’s too busy to write but sends her love . . .’

  While she worked, she listened continuously to the breathing that struggled along her father’s congested airways and kept him alive. Oh, yes, she thought, now that one had seen the possibility, it all fitted together and it all made sense: it was all of a piece with his sly and ruthless devotion to his own interests. At the fireplace, she paused to look at the photograph of her parents and herself. She picked up the frame and studied her mother’s face.

  How could you leave me, you bitch? This is all your fault.

  The longer Antonia searched, the more frantic and fevered she became. Finally she came to the bureau which she had saved until last as a child saves the most desirable morsel on the plate until the end. Her father’s medals were lying on the blotter beside the tray containing the rest of the poppies. She went through the contents of the drawers and she rummaged through the pigeon holes. She found the whisky bottle and the spare whisky bottle and two used glasses. She found her father’s wallet, his cheque book and his will, which, she was interested to discover, left everything to her mother, ‘my beloved wife’.

  At last Antonia was forced to admit defeat, though in a sense it was a kind of victory since it was a confirmation of what she had suspected; at least she was no longer deceived. She stared at the little row of medals which her father had taken out in preparation for the Armistice service. He had laid them in a neat row across the cream blotter, their ribbons precisely parallel and the metal newly burnished. Most of them, she knew, were campaign medals or war medals – the sort of decorations which so many men had, which signified nothing apart from the fact that they had been in uniform at a particular time and in a particular place.

  The decoration in the centre of the line, however, belonged in a different category. The ribbon was white watered silk with a purple stripe down the centre. From it depended a silver cross on each arm of which was an imperial crown, and in the middle was the imperial cipher GRI. Her father had won the Military Cross in 1917 for an act of valour under enemy fire. He had told Antonia when she was a girl that it had involved shooting a lot of damned Huns in a trench. He referred to the decoration in an offhand manner, but Antonia suspected that its award was perhaps the one unequivocally satisfactory achievement of his entire life.

  She lifted the blotter and with a flick of a wrist sent the medals cascading in a chinking, brightly coloured stream to the bottom of the wastepaper basket.

  For an instant the breathing stopped. Harcutt stirred in his chair. ‘What was that?’

  ‘Nothing, Father.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mr Quale stared at Thornhill with moist eyes and ran a forefinger round the substantial gap between his collar and his wrinkled neck.

  ‘You’re in luck, Inspector. He came back on the 7.29. He’s having his dinner.’ Quale pursed his lips and nodded knowingly. ‘Lamb cutlets, I fancy. I understand he’s partial to a bit of lamb.’

  ‘I’ll go and have a word with him,’ Thornhill said, shying away from Quale’s evident enjoyment of his role as the policeman’s friend. ‘Is he alone?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Mr Thornhill. I made sure of that. I took the liberty of having a word with Mr Forbin, our head waiter. Only too glad to oblige.’

  And his face made it only too obvious that such obligations had to be discharged in hard cash. Thornhill put a half-crown on the desk.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Quale.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ The gratitude was faintly tinged with sarcasm, which implied that half-a-crown had been too little. ‘The door opposite the lounge.’

  Neither Mr Quale nor Mr Forbin had needed to exercise much ingenuity to keep Genghis Carn away from the other diners. The dining room was as large as the lounge, and despite the fact that it was Saturday night, most of the tables were empty. Carn was sitting by himself near the huge sideboard which dominated one wall.

  The head waiter hurried over to Thornhill as he hesitated in the doorway. Forbin was a small, slovenly man of a similar age to Mr Quale. He swerved to make an apparently unnecessary diversion round a table. Thornhill guessed that the man wanted to angle his approach to the doorway so Mr Quale was in his line of vision, and that a signal must have passed between the two men.

  ‘Mr Thornhill,’ said the head waiter, beaming; his waistcoat strained across his potbelly and had lost one of its buttons. ‘I hope we shall have the honour of seeing you here for pleasure, as well as for business. This way, sir.’

  Thornhill followed Forbin’s swaying coat tails across the room to Carn’s table. He thought it probable that Carn had caught a glimpse of them in the big mirror above the sideboard. One of the diners glanced up at Thornhill as he passed. It was the man who had been with Jill Francis in the lounge and who had later come into the bar for a dry martini. His face was flushed and he was working his way through a bottle of Burgundy.

  Forbin drew up beside Carn’s table. ‘A visitor for you, sir,’ he announced.

  Carn looked up from his book. He dropped his spoon into his spotted dick and pushed the bowl away.

  With a flourish, Forbin pulled back a chair. Thornhill sat down and declined the head waiter’s offer to bring him some refreshment. Carn’s pale, protuberant blue eyes stared at Inspector Thornhill, while one hand rested on the open pages of the book as if marking the place. At close quarters, the pallor of his complexion made him seem a little less than human.

  ‘Mr James Carn?’ Thornhill said quietly, once Forbin had reluctantly withdrawn.

  The head nodded.

  ‘I understand you registered here as Mr James.’

  ‘Who might you be?’

  ‘My name’s Thornhill.’ He slid his warrant card across the table.

  Carn took his time examining it. ‘There’s no law against changing your name. Not that I have, of course.’

  ‘Did I say there was, Mr Carn?’ Thornhill paused. ‘What are you doing in Lydmouth?’

  ‘It’s a free country, Inspector. Can’t a man have a little holiday?’

  ‘I thought you’d just had a long holiday with free board and lodging.’

  Carn laid down his spoon. ‘I’ve paid my debt to society. That episode’s neither here nor there.’

  ‘Charlie Meague is in Lydmouth, isn’t he?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Don’t come the innocent. Rather an odd coincidence, I’d have thought. Perhaps you plan to combine business and pleasure?’

  Carn shrugged. He picked up his spoon and took a small mouthful of his pudding.

  ‘We’d like you to take your holiday somewhere else, Mr Carn.’

  ‘And why should your wishes influence me, Mr Thornhill?’

  ‘Two reasons. First, I’ll have a word with the manager, and I doubt if he’ll want your custom once he’s heard what I’ve got to say. And that goes for any other hotel or lodging house in this town. Second, we’re going to be keeping an eye on you – and on Charlie Meague.’

  ‘That sounds like harassment to me, Inspector. Perhaps I should have a word with my solicitor.’

  ‘You can do whatever you want as long as it’s within the law and as long as you’re out of Lydmouth by
tomorrow.’

  Carn’s eyes dropped back to his book. ‘Is there anything else?’

  Thornhill pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘I’m going to see the manager now.’

  The manager was thirty-five going on fifty, a portly fellow with a vague expression and an RAF handlebar moustache. He greeted Thornhill’s news with a mixture of fascination and horror.

  ‘Don’t worry, old man, he’ll have his bill with his coffee. Bloody cheek, eh? I say, do you think he’ll try and do a flit?’

  ‘I don’t think he’s that stupid,’ Thornhill said. ‘But let us know if he does.’

  When he had finished with the manager, Thornhill walked slowly down the hall to the front door. There was nothing to prevent him going home now, but he felt restless. Nor was there much to draw him home: the children were asleep and he and Edith were still wary of each other after the previous evening.

  As he was passing the door of the dining room, he glanced inside. Carn was no longer at his table. Coming towards the door was the tall man he had seen with Jill Francis. The man’s foot caught in the edge of the threadbare carpet running down the hall. He stumbled and would have fallen if Thornhill had not put out an arm.

  ‘Terribly sorry,’ he said loudly, clinging to Thornhill’s arm. ‘It’s a damned deathtrap, that carpet.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  The man straightened up and leant against the wall. ‘Not particularly,’ he said in that voice which was so irritatingly familiar. ‘Still, I would have been even less all right if you hadn’t caught me. In my book, that deserves a drink. Come and have a brandy.’

  Thornhill would usually have declined an invitation to help a drunk get drunker, even when the drinking was to be done at the drunk’s expense. But he allowed the man to take his arm and propel him across the hall and into the lounge. His motives were mixed. Although he didn’t particularly want to go home, there was nothing else he wanted to do. He had a professional excuse for staying in that his continued presence at the hotel might encourage Carn to believe that the police were serious. He was curious, too, about this man who didn’t belong in Lydmouth any more than he did. But the real reason, which Thornhill made himself admit as his host waved him towards an armchair, was that he wanted to discover the nature of the man’s connection with Jill Francis.

  ‘My name’s Oliver Yateley, by the way. Coffee and brandy?’

  ‘That’s very kind of you. I’m Richard Thornhill.’

  Yateley blinked at him as if he’d forgotten why he’d asked him for coffee and brandy. He struggled forward in his chair and held out his hand. ‘How do you do? I should warn you, go easy on the coffee. You could probably strip paint with it.’ A waitress came to take their order. ‘Large brandies, mind,’ he told her, articulating each syllable with precision. ‘No point in your having two journeys where one will do.’ He turned back to Thornhill. ‘You’re not staying here, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you live in Lydmouth?’ Yateley frowned. ‘Don’t take it personally, old chap, but I couldn’t stand living here. I’d be dead from the neck upwards within a week.’

  ‘I’ve only just moved here, so I’m not a good judge.’

  ‘I mean, look at this place.’ Yateley waved his arm around the lounge. ‘It’s so damned dreary.’

  The waitress brought them their coffee and brandy.

  Thornhill poured the coffee while Yateley went through the complicated procedure of finding his cigar case. He offered it to Thornhill who refused.

  ‘Still,’ he said between puffs as he tried to get his cigar drawing properly. ‘It can only get better, even in Lydmouth. Just wait till the next election. Yes, there’ll better times coming. You mark my words.’

  There’ll be better times coming – the phrase jogged Thornhill’s memory. ‘I’ve heard you on the radio, haven’t I? Talking about politics?’

  Yateley frowned slightly and then nodded. Smoke billowed round his face giving him the appearance of a pantomime demon. On the whole he did not seem displeased to be recognised.

  ‘I thought there was something familiar about your voice.’

  ‘The wireless – yes – goes with the job. Nowadays, if you’re in politics, you can’t just sit on your backside between elections. You have to reach out to your voters. Next thing we know it’ll be television. It’s a harsh mistress, politics, believe you me. I sometimes think I’ve had to sacrifice everything to it.’ He leaned closer to Thornhill and sucked deeply on the cigar. His cheeks were pink and his eyes gleamed; he displayed all the symptoms of a man approaching the confidential stage of a maudlin evening. ‘And I mean everything.’ He hesitated, but only for a second. ‘For example, if I hadn’t gone into parliament, I’d have made a fortune by now. And then there’s the effect it has on one’s personal relationships.’

  Yateley flung out an arm and picked up his brandy, jogging Thornhill’s coffee cup as he did so. He appeared not to notice the spillage and swallowed the contents of his glass.

  Thornhill knew almost immediately that something was wrong. Yateley put down the glass and had another suck of his cigar. But his eyes were pleading as they gazed at Thornhill, and he swallowed three times in quick succession. Nature, Thornhill guessed with a hint of malicious pleasure, was exacting its price for overindulgence.

  Yateley struggled to his feet. ‘You’ll have to – um – excuse me a moment.’

  He dropped the cigar in the general direction of the ashtray, but his aim was poor and it fell on to the table instead. He blundered across the room, pushed his way through a knot of men who had congregated in the doorway and stumbled out of sight. Thornhill picked up the cigar and stubbed it out.

  Somewhere in the hall, a man started shouting. The words were indistinguishable, but the outrage was obvious. Another man replied; the voice was Yateley’s.

  Suppressing his reluctance to get involved, Thornhill got up and joined the group of men in the doorway. Yateley was leaning against the wall near the dining-room door and muttering angrily. Facing him was the building contractor, Cyril George. There was a dark stain on George’s trousers and pieces of glass on the carpet.

  ‘I expect an apology,’ George was saying, and he jabbed his forefinger repeatedly into Yateley’s chest to emphasise his words. ‘Barging around like a storm trooper – who do you think you are?’

  George was very nearly as drunk as Yateley, but far more aggressive. He was with friends, one on either side of him, both with flushed faces, whose very presence no doubt encouraged him to take umbrage. They were all big men, plump and prosperous in their dinner jackets. The three of them had probably come down from the Masonic dinner upstairs.

  ‘Well?’ George said. ‘I want an apology, sir. I want some more brandy. And I don’t want to see your face in this hotel again.’

  Yateley licked his lips which were very pale; he swallowed and said in a strangled voice, ‘Why don’t you bugger off?’

  Thornhill slipped into the hall. Forbin was standing in the dining-room doorway and Quale was watching the encounter from his desk; neither man was likely to intervene. George took a step closer to Yateley. Thornhill put a restraining hand on the building contractor’s right arm.

  ‘Let go of me,’ George snapped, showing his jagged yellow teeth. Then his cloudy, bloodshot eyes widened as he recognised Thornhill. ‘Sergeant, you can bloody well make yourself useful for once. This man’s causing a public nuisance. I want him off the premises. Can’t you arrest him?’

  ‘I’ll deal with this,’ Thornhill said.

  ‘A night in the cells would do him the world of good. Look at him. Drunk as a lord.’

  ‘I’d like you gentlemen to move along now.’

  No one moved.

  ‘Listen, Sergeant,’ George said. ‘Do I have to spell this out? Superintendent Williamson is a personal friend of mine. In fact, he’s upstairs at this very moment.’

  Thornhill had met this sort of pressure many times in his career and once or twice he
had buckled under the strain. He said in a tight, controlled voice, ‘Then I suggest you go back and join him, sir.’

  He stepped forward and took Yateley’s arm. Taken by surprise, Yateley followed docilely when Thornhill began to tow him down the hall.

  ‘Mr Quale,’ Thornhill said. ‘May I have this gentleman’s room key?’

  Quale passed the key across the desk. His face was alive with interest and he was smiling, revealing a set of gleaming false teeth.

  Thornhill urged Yateley towards the stairs. His attention strained towards the men behind him. You could hear their voices murmuring, but they hadn’t moved. He thought it would be all right. He hated situations when there was a threat of physical violence and he doubted his own ability to control them. There was also the small matter of how Williamson would react to the incident.

  Yateley grasped the banisters and Thornhill urged him upstairs. When they reached the top of the stairs, he and Yateley zigzagged arm and arm down the landing, twice colliding with pieces of furniture, to Room 15. Thornhill propped him up against the wall while he unlocked the door.

  ‘Lavatory,’ Yateley said. ‘Oh, Christ.’

  Thornhill guided him to the bathroom on the opposite side of the corridor. Thornhill saw him collapse on his knees in front of the bowl. Oliver Yateley coughed once and moaned softly. He rested his arms on the porcelain rim of the lavatory, exposing the heavy gold links on his shirt cuffs. As Yateley began to vomit, Thornhill closed the bathroom door.

  He was tempted to walk away. All the signs were that Yateley’s life was in a mess. If Cyril George made good his threat of telling Williamson, then the mess would envelop Thornhill too, whatever he did now.

  On the other side of the bathroom door, the retching continued. Thornhill crossed the landing and stood in the doorway of Room 15. The sagging brass bedstead, the shapeless armchair and the faded curtains were all familiar: he had seen them before in a dozen bedrooms in provincial hotels past their prime. The air smelled of leather and cigar smoke. He advanced a yard or two into the room. In front of him was the dressing table and on it was a leatherbound writing case. It was closed, but the zip had not been fastened; the corner of a photograph protruded from the top.