by Simon Brett
‘The two cases are not comparable. First, I am Head of Department ’
‘Not yet you aren’t!’
‘In all but name.’ The words were delivered with great forbearance. ‘Secondly,’ he continued, ‘if I thought I needed an assistant in here for the efficient discharge of my duties, I would install one.’
‘Meaning I don’t discharge my duties efficiently?’
‘Meaning that it is insane to have someone in that job who’s not computer literate.’
‘What?’ This frontal attack winded Graham. Mustering what reserves of sarcasm he had left, he asked, ‘If that’s how you feel, why don’t you just get me out of the job? Kick me out?’
‘I have investigated the possibility,’ Robert replied coolly, ‘and unfortunately it can’t be done. You’re too senior in the company to be removed for any reason other than gross misconduct.’
‘Terrific,’ said Graham. ‘I’m honoured that you’ve taken the trouble to find that out. And bear in mind, you’re less senior in the company, and getting you removed may prove a lot easier!’
Graham Marshall looked down at the swirling waters of the Thames from Hammersmith Bridge. The place now held no fears for him; rather it was a source of strength, a shrine almost, the scene of his conversion, of his rebirth.
The sun that glinted on the water was warm with the promise of summer. It made him think of holidays. Yes, he would have a nice holiday this year. Somewhere hot, somewhere rather luxurious. He would put behind him the rowdy family heartiness of Cyprus, the awful memories of self-catering in Wales, and go. . where? The West Indies, maybe … Yes, that had the right sort of feel. And he’d certainly be able to afford it now. Luxury for one was comparatively inexpensive.
He thought about his scene with Robert Benham. The skirmishing was over; both sides had nailed their colours to the mast. For Robert to have admitted that he had investigated removing his rival left no further ambiguity in the relationship. It was now open war.
Graham had spent lunchtime in the company bar with other members of the Department, and then set off home, an action that could be interpreted as a symptom of bereavement, or an expression of pique against Robert Benham.
The bar-room conversation had given Graham considerable encouragement. His were not the only hackles which had been raised by Robert Benham’s ungentle style. Already, before he had taken over the job, a power-base of opposition had built up against him. Marshalling that opposition was the kind of task for which Graham’s skills were uniquely formed. He began to relish the guerrilla warfare ahead.
Robert Benham would fight hard, but Graham knew that Robert Benham would not win. He might have a formidable armoury of skills and talent, but he did not possess Graham’s ultimate weapon. It was a weapon that might not be brought into play, but it was there, and in extremity Graham Marshall would not hesitate to use it.
On his way home Graham walked past an estate agent. He went in, announced that he wished to put his house on the market and arranged a time for a valuer to call and assess the profit of his crime.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘I think we really ought to sell it. I’m sure we could use the money.’
‘What?’ Graham looked up. He had only half heard his mother-in-law’s words, engrossed in the book he had just got from the library. It was a book about famous murder cases, and he was reading it with amused relish. It boosted his confidence. They had all been such incompetents, such amateurs, all weakened by lapses into inefficiency or pity. His feeling of untouchable exclusivity increased.
Lilian repeated her words, exactly, an habitual form of reproach she had used on her daughters when they weren’t listening to her. She prefaced the statement, as ever, with ‘I said’.
‘I said, I think we really ought to sell it. I’m sure we could use the money.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Go to an estate agent. Put it on the market.’
‘Ah.’ Graham smiled. ‘I’ve already done it.’
He anticipated an explosion, and rather enjoyed the anticipation. The scene had to come, and it was as well to get the future sorted out sooner rather than later.
But he was disappointed. Lilian did not seem put down by his revelation; if anything it cheered her up. ‘Good,’ she said.
‘We want to get things sorted out as soon as possible.’
This sentiment so exactly mirrored his own that he stared at her with some bewilderment. It did not seem likely that Lilian Hinchcliffe should succumb to a sudden flush of reasonableness at her advanced age.
She looked quite girlish as she continued. ‘Might get as much as thirty thousand for it now.’
‘Thirty thousand? You’re out of date, Lilian. If I only got thirty thousand, I would have been done. Do you know how much I paid for this house?’
‘This house?’ In the echo her girlishness was gone. Every year of her age, and a few more, showed in her face.
‘Yes. This house.’
‘But, Graham, you can’t sell this house. I was talking about my flat.’
‘Ah.’ He laughed good-naturedly at her error.
‘You can’t sell this house. It’s ideal for us and the children.’
‘I disagree.’
‘Is it the money? I thought the mortgage was paid off by Merrily’s death. But if it is money, when we’ve sold my flat I’d be happy to lend you — ’
‘It isn’t the money. I just want to sell the house.’
‘Oh yes, that’s a natural reaction. Straight after Merrily’s death, with the cremation only yesterday, of course the house is full of memories. . But you mustn’t do anything hasty. Henry and Emma need stability at the moment. Don’t you see that, Graham?’
He shook his head with some impatience. He had always found it exasperating how much slower most people’s minds worked than his own. And now that he had planned his future with such sense and precision, it was annoying to encounter someone unable to appreciate his logic.
‘Lilian, I will tell you what is going to happen,’ he began patiently. ‘Merrily’s death has merely crystallised something I have been thinking for a long time. I do not enjoy family life. I would like to live on my own. And I am now free to follow my inclination. Because she is dead.’ And then he added, for form’s sake, ‘Sad and regrettable though that undoubtedly is.’
Lilian Hinchcliffe’s mouth gaped open. ‘You’re in shock. You ought to go and see a doctor. Graham, you’re not talking sense.’
‘On the contrary. I am talking better sense probably than I have ever talked to you. There is no need for me to go and see a doctor. I am not in shock. I am simply telling you that I wish in future to live on my own and am therefore going to sell this house. It seems a perfectly logical decision to me.’
‘But no, no it’s not logical. You are forgetting that there’s not just you. There’s Henry and Emma, and me. You do not exist on your own.’
Ah, but I do, thought Graham smugly. Very much on my own. Two murders have set me apart from everyone else in the world. And the thought gave him a burning, exhilarating sense of identity.
But he still had the boring process of spelling it all out to go through. ‘Listen, Lilian, the only thing you and I ever had in common was Merrily. We never liked each other. No, don’t argue, don’t pretend, we never did. Merrily was our sole, circumstantial link. With her gone, there is no reason why we should ever see each other again.’
‘But, Graham, she’s only just dead and. . I’ve just lost my daughter, I. .’
‘Better to get it sorted out now,’ he said soothingly, ‘than for either of us to continue under any illusions.’ In the circumstances, he really thought he was being very understanding, breaking it to her with great sensitivity.
She gaped more. Tears appeared in her eyes, their appearance delayed by genuine shock rather longer than in most of her scenes.
‘But, but Graham, putting me on one side for a moment. .’
Which is exactly what I’m doing
, he thought.
‘What about the children? You are Henry and Emma’s father. You can’t just abandon them.’
‘I am confident that Henry and Emma will be well looked after. Better looked after than by me. By someone who really cares for them.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Sarcasm now overcame the self-pity in her voice. ‘You’re just relying on me to come up trumps. You throw them over and you know their grandmother will cope. Well, of course I will. But I can’t cope without somewhere to live.’
‘You have somewhere to live. Your flat.’
‘There’s not room for Henry and Emma in my flat.’
‘I am not suggesting that there is. You live in your flat. They don’t.’
‘But where do they live? You said they were going to be looked after by someone who really cares for them.’
‘Henry and Emma are going to live with Charmian.’
The words were softly delivered, but their effect could not have been more devastating. Her jaw did what only the cliche describes, and dropped. She mouthed, as if the whole world contained insufficient oxygen for her needs. Graham wondered idly if she was about to have a heart attack. In many ways it might simplify his life if she did.
But eventually her voice returned. ‘Graham, you’re mad,’ it whispered. ‘Quite, quite mad. Certifiably mad.’
‘No,’ he replied gently.
‘Yes, you talk as if you’ve planned this for years.’
‘Not exactly planned it — certainly thought about it.’ Which was an accurate assessment, he reckoned. There had been a bit of planning, yes, but there had also been strokes of pure luck, like Charmian’s offer, symptoms of the fact that everything was going his way.
‘Oh yes, planned it.’ Lilian’s voice was recovering strength; her theatrical training never deserted her for long. ‘You were just waiting for Merrily’s death. In fact. .’ her eyes widened as the thought struck home, ‘. . perhaps you even planned Merrily’s death.’
A week before this would have really rocked him; now he felt confident to field any accusation. ‘What, you mean murdered her?’
Lilian nodded, wordlessly.
Graham smiled. ‘I think for me to have murdered her, Lilian, I would have had to be here at the time of her death. Don’t you? Also the police did make rather exhaustive investigations. Didn’t they? Had there been the slightest suspicion of anything other than an accident, I think it might have come up at the inquest. Don’t you?’
There was a long silence. Lilian regarded him with acute distaste. Then she changed direction, and changed style. The first impact of the shock had limited her histrionics, but now it was fading, and her customary manner reasserted itself.
‘I can’t believe how cruel you’re being,’ she sobbed. ‘I’ve never been so hurt, never. Just after Merrily’s death, to hear what you’ve said. . I’ve suffered a lot in my life, but never like this. Even lovers have never hurt me like. . Even when William Essex broke off our affaire, I didn’t feel like this.’
‘Well, you must have seen that coming.’
‘What?’
He knew he was being vindictive, but he felt she deserved it. The accusation about Merrily had been nasty; a revengeful home truth was therefore justified.
‘You must have known why William Essex broke off your so-called affaire.’
‘Why?’
‘If indeed it ever started.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that William Essex was gay. Was always gay.’
‘No!’
‘God, it wasn’t just people in the business who knew. It was virtually admitted in The Times obituary. He was one of the country’s most famous old theatrical queens.’
‘He may have turned strange as he got older, but when we were lovers — ’
‘If there ever was a moment when he made advances to you, it must have been just a test, a challenge to himself, to see if he could make it with a woman.’
‘No. We were in love.’ She broke down in tears.
He knew it was cruel, but he was sick to death of her. All her posturing and embroidered reminiscences seemed irrelevant. Irrelevant and annoying. Now the confrontation had come, he was prepared to use any trick to hurry her out of his life.
The sobbing subsided, and when she spoke again, the subject had changed. She sniffed. ‘I must repair my face before I get the children from school.’
He said nothing as she moved across the room. At the door she turned back to him. ‘Why?’ she asked softly. ‘Why Charmian?’
‘Because,’ he replied in a logical tone, ‘I think she’ll bring them up better than you will.’
‘I see.’ The voice was very small, just like the little voice Merrily had always used in reproach.
It was that which prompted his next callousness. ‘Besides, you talked of their stability. Charmian’s forty-five. Just from the practical point of view, she’s going to be round a lot longer than you are.’
‘Yes,’ Lilian riposted defiantly. ‘You don’t know how right you are.’
Graham had difficulty in getting to sleep that night. It was not his conscience that was troubling him. Any conscience he had ever had had been removed from him over the past weeks as effectively as if by a surgeon’s knife.
Nor had there been any further outburst from Lilian. She had behaved quietly, fetched the children from school, given them tea, played board-games with them and put them to bed. Both had gone without fuss. They were still taking the mild relaxants the doctor had prescribed to help them over the shock of their mother’s death.
Lilian had then cooked supper for herself and Graham. The meal had been consumed in silence, the television tactfully on to provide an alibi for the lack of conversation. After washing up, Lilian had retired for an early night.
Her behaviour had been exemplary. And if her expression had been too martyred or she had drawn too much attention to how good she was being, such gestures were so much part of her normal repertoire that Graham had long since learned to ignore them.
No, it was something that she had said in the afternoon’s confrontation that had disturbed him. Not the moment when she had accused him of Merrily’s murder; in retrospect he had rather enjoyed that. Her coming so close to the truth gave him the frisson of playing chicken; it partially satisfied that craving in him for confession, for sharing the knowledge of his crimes with someone. And the wildness of her accusation, and the skill with which he answered it, gave him a feeling of inner strength.
What had upset him was the moment when she had described him as ‘mad’.
The word hurt and unsettled him. The slur of mental illness had never before been cast on him. He remembered acquaintances at university and at work who had ‘cracked’, proved unequal to the system and gone under. He had always felt mild contempt for them and a righteous sense of his own immunity from their disease. His behaviour had always been logical and positive; it was not in his nature to brood or feel self-doubt.
At least it had not been in his nature until recently. The compound batterings of losing the job and committing the first murder had rocked his equilibrium for a time, he was prepared to admit that; but he now felt back on an even keel, perhaps more logical and positive in his approach than at any previous time in his life.
What worried him was the knowledge that a frequent symptom of mental illness (madness, call it by another name, he knew what he meant) was delusion, a conviction held as strongly as in sanity, but a conviction based on a scale of values that are false.
He questioned himself about this. Certainly he had changed. Two months previously he would not have contemplated murder, yet now he had committed it twice without remorse, and drew strength from what he had done. Was that madness?
He knew there was a school of thought that classified all taking of human life as aberrant behaviour. But that was surely just a moral viewpoint, circumscribed by the great taboo which surrounds the crime. He, Graham Marshall, by his initially inadvertent breach of that
taboo, had transcended such inhibited thinking. He knew he could commit murder and gain satisfaction from doing it, so his recent actions were no less logical and positive than his behaviour had been for the rest of his life.
Besides, he thought, giving himself the final warmth of comfort, if what he had done was madness, surely it couldn’t make him feel so good.
No, if he couldn’t sleep, it was simply excitement. And strain. The athletic metaphor returned to his mind. He had given of himself in the big event, he had won, and he must expect some reaction. He needed to wind down, take it easy, as he selected his next challenge.
In the short term what he needed was a large Scotch.
On the landing he heard moaning from inside the bathroom and threw the door open.
The noise was coming from Lilian, who lay in the bath.
Graham’s first shock was the sight of her naked body, and its similarity, in shrivelled parody, to Merrily’s. To the body that was now compounded to a little scattering of dust.
Then he saw the redness in the water.
He raised first one limp hand, then the other. On each wrist a narrow slit trickled blood.
But the cuts barely scraped the skin. Her arteries were in no danger.
God, if that was her idea of a cry for help, it was hardly worth answering.
‘I’ll ring the doctor,’ he announced, fully aware that she was conscious. At the door he turned back suddenly, and was rewarded by the sight of her open eyes. Their expression was of sheepishness at having been caught out.
Downstairs by the phone was a note in Lilian’s handwriting. He didn’t bother to read it.
Bloody amateurs, he thought as he dialled the doctor’s number, I’m surrounded by bloody amateurs.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Graham looked across his desk at Terry Sworder with distaste. The young man had chosen to come into the office in an open-necked tennis shirt under a hooded cotton zip-jacket like a tracksuit top. A soggy little cigar dropped from his lip. Graham pitied the lack of style. In the days when he himself had sought to shock management by dressing boldly, it had been done with a sense of elegance; he had never been merely scruffy. Graham had passed comment on the inappropriateness of the costume when Terry arrived, but been told that ‘Bob’s taken me off normal Personnel stuff at the moment. Wants me to check some of the projections we’ve run through the computer for this survey.’