The Marx Sisters

by The Marx Sisters (epub)

‘At first we got our wires crossed with Mr Kowalski. We assumed that the letter must have come from the shop itself, found in the attic or something, and he didn’t understand what we were going on about. Eventually he explained that he had bought it not so very long ago. The lady who had sold it to him had also given him a box of books, but no other letters that he could recall.

  “What kind of books?” Judith demanded. “Old books, on history, or socialism perhaps?” He scratched his head and said no, he didn’t think so. He thought they were children’s books. He didn’t know where they would be now.

  ‘We spent a fruitless hour searching the shelves, Judith starting in Politics and History, and me in Children. Finally we spoke again to Kowalski, asking for the name of the person who’d sold him the letter. He was reluctant to give it to us, saying that the woman was elderly and might not want to be bothered. Was the document valuable, then? he wanted to know, sounding rather worried. He’d probably recognized the signs of an over-anxious buyer and thought there might be some money in this. He said he would speak to the seller himself, and see whether she had anything else that might be of interest to us. He took my business card and agreed to call me if anything turned up.

  ‘But it was Mrs Winterbottom herself who phoned me a couple of days after Judith had gone on to Paris. She didn’t seem to know what I wanted to talk to her about, so I explained that my friend was a historian, and she was interested in the letter I had bought from Mr Kowalski because it related to the period she was studying. Did Mrs Winterbottom have any other documents from that period? She wasn’t sure, but said she’d have a look. Apparently there were lots of old papers and things her mother had left, but whether they’d been thrown out by this time, she didn’t know. I told her that my friend would be back in London again in a couple of weeks, and asked if I could phone her nearer the time to arrange a meeting, and she gave me her address and phone number.

  ‘By the time Judith returned from Paris, Herbert and I had agreed to part company. The Lowell Partnership moved to much larger and more prestigious premises in Docklands, establishing a joint project office with a firm of New York architects for the Jerusalem Lane project, which they were now calling “Citicenter One”, would you believe. I took over the lease of this place, and set up on my own as Concept Design, with just one job, a loft conversion in a friend’s house in Maida Vale.

  ‘I contacted Mrs Winterbottom again, and she agreed to see us at a certain time on this Sunday afternoon—she was quite particular about the time.’

  ‘When was this?’ Kathy said.

  ‘It must have been about a month ago. Yes, four weekends ago, I should think. Judith had timed her flights around the meeting. We arrived at 3, and Mrs Winterbottom invited us in to her flat and gave us a cup of tea. We chatted about the weather, and how Judith had been in Paris. Mrs Winterbottom mentioned she’d never been there, although it was so close, but she had been to Sydney, which was so far away, and she laughed at that. I got the impression she was sizing us up, to tell the truth, trying to find out if she could trust us. She chatted away about her family, and how she had a granddaughter who had been to Paris on a school trip, and I could feel Judith getting impatient, but trying not to show it. Then suddenly the old lady got down to business. She started talking about books. She didn’t have any herself now, she said, she preferred the telly. But her sisters did have some of the old books their mother had left them. She explained they lived in separate flats upstairs, and would we like to take a look?

  ‘We said yes, if it wouldn’t disturb them, and she explained that they always went out on a Sunday afternoon, but that they wouldn’t mind if we went upstairs and had a little look.’

  ‘You said she was very particular about when you called,’ Kathy said. ‘Are you saying she intentionally made it for a time when her sisters would be out?’

  ‘I didn’t really think about it. I suppose it’s possible. We went upstairs with her, and into a flat with the name “Harper”, I think it was. Judith’s eyes lit up when she saw the wall of books in the main room inside.

  “Eleanor loves books,” Mrs Winterbottom said. “Most are fairly recent, I suppose, but I’m sure there are a few old ones that came from our grandmother to our mother.”

  ‘Judith was rapidly scanning the titles, as if she might at any moment be deprived of her opportunity. When she had looked at everything once, she returned to some old volumes on the shelves by the window. She took them out, one by one, turning to the flyleaf and then flicking through the pages. She had her back to me as she examined them, but I could hear her intake of breath as each book was opened.

  ‘I went over and asked her if she’d found something. “Proudhon’s Confessions,” she said. “And look!” Her eyes were shining with excitement as she pointed to the handwritten dedication in the flyleaf. It was in the same black spidery writing as in the letter I’d found, though it had been more carefully scripted, and it was clearly signed “Karl Marx”.

  ‘“Are they the sort of thing you’d be interested in, then?” Mrs Winterbottom had been watching us from the centre of the room. I remember that as she turned to answer her, Judith suddenly stopped and stared at an old photograph hanging on the wall. She said something like, “Oh, how extraordinary”, and the old lady told her it was their great-aunt, whom her sister admired enormously. “Mind you,” she added, “some of our Eleanor’s ideas are a bit odd to my way of thinking. She’s an intellectual. Both of my sisters are. I inherited the common sense rather than the brain-power. But I’m the one what pays the bills.” Then she said, quick as a flash, “And do you think them books might be worth a bob or two, then?”

  ‘She caught Judith off guard, and I began to see that she was probably quite a shrewd old duck.

  ‘“Well, frankly, Mrs Winterbottom,” Judith said, “I don’t think they would fetch much just left out on the shelves of Mr Kowalski’s bookshop. But on the other hand they would be of value to someone like myself, studying the history of that period. I think I could probably persuade my university to come up with quite a reasonable figure for them.”

  ‘It sounded to me that she was patronizing the old dear, and I wasn’t sure it was going to work.

  ‘“My granddaughter is at the London University,” Mrs Winterbottom said innocently. “Is that where you are too, dear?” Judith said no, she was at Princeton, in the United States. “Oh, an American university, eh? They have lots of money, I dare say.”

  ‘Judith began to look a bit worried. “Well, I don’t know about that,” she said. “But I think they might be willing to pay your sister . . . oh, perhaps fifty or even a hundred pounds each for these older books.”

  ‘“A hundred nicker! Well! That’s better than a slap in the face with a cold kipper, eh, Mr Jones?” And she dug me in the ribs with her elbow and cackled happily. Judith said, “But do you think your sister would be interested in selling, though, Mrs Winterbottom? She might be attached to these books?” She sounded pretty anxious.

  ‘ “Well, you’d best leave that to me, dear,” the old lady said. “She may not want to sell. But on the other hand we have a lot of expenses at the moment, and neither of my sisters contributes much in the way of cash, like. The pensions from their work weren’t so good in their day, and they’d always rented, never bought as my Frank used to tell them—which is just money down the drain, isn’t it? So these books, which was left to all of us, like, when our mother died, perhaps they’re something that my sisters might feel they could now contribute toward the household expenses, now that we’re in need. But I’d have to put it to them.”’

  ‘So she was quite specific about needing money?’ Kathy said.

  Jones nodded.

  ‘And you don’t think she’d previously had any idea that the books might be valuable?’

  ‘That’s right. My impression was that she was pretty sharp, and she probably guessed as soon as Kowalski contacted her that she might have something of value. Presumably she’d insisted on meeting us
herself, rather than go through the book dealer. And once Judith started looking inside those books she really hadn’t been able to hide her excitement. It was obvious to me, and it must have been to Mrs Winterbottom too.’

  ‘What about Judith’s valuation of them? Was it fair?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. My guess, listening to her, was that they had to be worth more.’

  ‘And if Mrs Winterbottom was as smart as you think, she probably drew the same conclusion?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘We had a look in Peg’s flat too, but there were far fewer books there, and none held the same interest for Judith. Then we went back down to the first-floor flat, where we chatted about the weather. We assumed that was the end of our meeting, when Mrs Winterbottom suddenly asked if we were interested in papers as well as books, because she’d had a bit of a look and had come across one or two things. We sat down in her living room again while she disappeared into her bedroom. She waddled back in with two sheets of paper covered with the same black ink scrawl as on the letter. As soon as I saw it, I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I looked across at Judith and she was frozen in her seat, her eyes fixed on the pages.

  ‘Eventually Judith asked, very quietly, what they were, and Mrs Winterbottom said that they were just a couple of sheets from a bundle of old stuff she’d found among her mother’s papers. There were more, but most of them were in store. She wondered if this was the sort of thing Judith was interested in.

  ‘Judith took the sheets carefully from her and studied the writing intently. Just the way she held them you could tell she felt as if she was handling something very precious. The old lady was delighted. “I can’t make heads nor tails of it,” she cackled. “It’s like doctor’s writing.”

  ‘Judith explained that it was very difficult for her, just sitting there, to tell what it might be. She said she’d really have to take them away and show them to someone else.

  ‘“Oh well, that’s all right, dear, I trust you,” Mrs Winterbottom said. “Only, you might like to show good faith, like, and leave a small deposit.”

  ‘Judith jumped at the offer, then realized that she was only carrying francs and dollars. I had two ten-pound notes in my wallet, and she reached over and pulled both out and gave them to Mrs Winterbottom.

  ‘“Thank you, dear,” she said. “I suppose they must be worth at least that? So if there were a few hundred sheets, they’d be worth a few thousand quid?”

  ‘Judith’s jaw dropped. “There’s a few hundred?”

  ‘“Oh, I couldn’t say for sure, dear. Not till I look. But I was saying just supposing.”

  ‘“Well, I don’t know. Perhaps.”

  ‘“Course if they was valuable,” the old bird went on innocently, “I mean part of our heritage, like, perhaps it would be wrong to sell them to an American university. Maybe I should see if a British university would like to buy them.”

  ‘To give her credit, Judith didn’t show the panic she must have felt. She gave the old dear a warm smile and said, oh no, it was a specialized field, and Judith was about the only person working in it. She didn’t think there’d be any British university interested in that sort of thing. There were so many old papers in people’s attics, after all. It was a matter of being lucky enough to find a researcher interested in the specific ones. She said it so smoothly and casually. It was interesting to watch someone that you knew doing that, lying through their teeth.

  ‘Mrs Winterbottom insisted that we drink a glass of port with her to toast our business partnership, as she called it, and then we left. Judith put the sheets between two layers of cardboard which she clutched tightly on her lap all the way back to the airport. She didn’t want to talk. She just stared out of the car window, eyes shining.

  ‘We didn’t hear anything for a while, then Mrs Winterbottom contacted me again, making the appointment for last Sunday. Judith flew over especially from the States for the meeting, arriving at Heathrow that Sunday morning. She was bubbling with anticipation. The handwriting on the two pages was definitely Marx’s, and the text was an excerpt from the draft of an essay on the theory of socialism, to which she hadn’t been able to find any reference in any of the text books. In my car as we drove from the airport, and all the time we waited for the meeting, she couldn’t stop talking about it. She went on and on about how she hadn’t been able to sleep for thinking about the hundreds of pages that might be lying in some store-box somewhere.’

  Bob Jones smiled at the recollection, and shifted his empty glass around on the table top.

  ‘I thought she looked just like the agitated student she’d never been at university. I much preferred her this way, excited, enthusiastic . . . vulnerable, I suppose, although I’d have liked it better if she could have transferred some of that excitement in my direction. Oh well.’ He shrugged ruefully.

  ‘Anyway, you can understand why we were so disappointed when we couldn’t get to see Mrs Winterbottom that afternoon. After we looked around at number 22, we decided to go and have a cup of tea somewhere and come back in half an hour, when she might have woken up. Actually we phoned then, but there was no reply. We tried again after another half-hour, and when there was still no reply, we walked back to Jerusalem Lane. That’s when we saw the ambulance there, and somebody in the street said that Mrs Winterbottom had been taken seriously ill. Judith was devastated, but she had to catch the evening flight back to New York and couldn’t wait.’

  Jones sat back in his chair and took a deep breath. His chin sank on his chest and he seemed suddenly drained, as if completing his account had exhausted him. Kathy looked at him, wondering. She glanced at Brock, who gave no indication of wanting to pursue the interview.

  ‘Did you talk to Mrs Winterbottom about the redevelopment of Jerusalem Lane?’ she asked.

  Jones shook his head.

  ‘Oh, come on. You knew what was going on in the background, the plans that were being prepared. Surely you must have been curious about how she stood?’

  Jones sighed and avoided meeting her eyes. ‘To be perfectly honest, I was embarrassed. I would have liked to know if she and the other residents realized what was going on, but I didn’t want to have to answer her questions if she thought I maybe knew things that she didn’t. Also, I felt I had an obligation to Slade to keep quiet. And . . . I felt guilty, I suppose. The first time we met her I did mention that I’d noticed that the bookshop seemed to have closed down. She said the Kowalskis were leaving the neighbourhood, and I asked her if she had any plans like that. It was as far as I felt I could go. She said she didn’t.’

  ‘What about the books and manuscript? Have you got an idea of their total value? Did Judith mention anything?’

  ‘No, no.’ He shook his head wearily. ‘Those figures I gave you were all that she said to me. She didn’t talk about money at all when we met last Sunday, and of course we had no idea how much stuff Mrs Winterbottom was going to come up with.’

  Kathy said nothing for a moment, then quietly, ‘What were your first thoughts when you read that Mrs Winterbottom might have been murdered?’

  Jones looked up at her, and she thought she saw anguish in his eyes. ‘I . . . I don’t know. I suppose I wondered if it could have had anything to do with what Judith was interested in, but it seemed so unlikely. I mean she may not be the only scholar in the world interested in Marxist sources, but it’s a bit esoteric as a motive for murder, isn’t it? Then I thought . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I thought . . . about the redevelopment project. I thought about that big office in Docklands with all those blokes drawing away like mad. I thought about the cost of servicing the site purchase-funding and the cost of delays . . . When I asked Mrs Winterbottom about moving, she said she’d recently had an offer to sell, but she said she never would. She said they’d have to carry her out in a box.’

  They returned to the car. There had been a short break in the rain, but water s
till coursed along the gutters.

  ‘Can you drop me off at the Yard?’ Brock asked. ‘I have some things to catch up on.’ He seemed preoccupied.

  ‘Of course.’

  They drove in silence for a while. Then Brock said, ‘The lawyers would have a great time with him in the witness box. It’d take a week to get through his opening statement.’

  ‘He did go on a bit,’ Kathy said, glad to talk about it. ‘I didn’t really mind, though. I found the background about Slade quite interesting.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Brock stared out of the side window, arms folded. ‘If it’s relevant. You liked him.’ It was a statement.

  ‘Oh . . .’ Kathy hesitated. ‘Well, yes, I suppose I did. I liked the way he was honest about his failures. He was almost painfully open about them, I thought—about trying to seduce Judith Naismith, and the fiasco with his design for the Lane. And I liked his enthusiasm, the way he really believed in what he was doing.’ She glanced over at Brock. ‘You don’t agree?’

  ‘I kept thinking,’ Brock said after a long pause, ‘that he had an awful lot of overheads to support on one loft conversion in Maida Vale.’

  14

  Kathy stared up at the reflection of herself in the mirrored ceiling. Against the crumpled satin sheets her body and that of Martin beside her looked as if they had been pinned untidily into some giant specimen case.

  ‘This place is so gross,’ she said. ‘Why do all your friends have such bad taste? They think “expensive” means “smart”.’

  Martin stirred and traced a finger down her side. ‘Very convenient, though. Two minutes from the office. OK?’ he murmured.

  ‘Mmm. Always.’ Actually it hadn’t been so good. Martin was tense and hurried.

  ‘Lot on?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, yes. Difficult case in court later on this afternoon. You?’

  ‘Always variety, you know. Yesterday we went to the seaside in the morning, a funeral in the afternoon, and heard a long shaggy dog story from an architect in the evening.’