Gently with the Ladies

by Alan Hunter

  The flames burned low in the chafing-dish, became searching blue glow-worms, went out. A few browned scraps of paper remained unconsumed in the rustling ash.

  ‘Get out of here,’ Mrs Bannister said.

  She turned her back on the dish and Gently.

  Gently took his leave. He surprised Albertine, who had her ear to the door.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE DIVISIONAL H.Q. was newly-built in a style of sixth-decade New Town, and inside had an air of hearty brightness and aggressive anti-traditionalism. The C.I.D. was on the first floor. It was reached by a sweep of riser-less steps. Flanking the foot of the steps, in strip-work holders, were two potted rubber-plants with dusty leaves. The steps projected from raw brickwork which extended from the hall to the first-floor ceiling, but which was met at the level of the landing by a plastered wall painted dark blue. Reynolds’ office was at the end of the landing. It was shaped like a shoe-box and had one end of glass.

  Gently went in without knocking. He found Reynolds in conference with Buttifant. They were seated on opposite sides of a formica-topped table on which lay a pair of shoes and some pieces of clothing. Buttifant was peering at these with a magnifier, but Reynolds was smoking and staring out of the window. He threw a sharp glance as the door opened, then ducked his head and rose.

  ‘Well,’ Gently said, ‘are we any forwarder?’

  ‘We’re filling in the story, Chief,’ Reynolds said. ‘Seems there’s no doubt about Fazakerly’s sea-trip, though nobody knows why he wasn’t drowned.’

  ‘He probably lacks a drowning mark,’ Gently said. ‘He has a different sort of complexion. Have we found his yacht?’

  ‘At Harwich, where he said. And the owners at Rochester recognized his photograph.’

  Gently pointed to the clothing. ‘What about those?’

  ‘We’re sending them down to the lab now.’

  ‘But there are no obvious stains?’

  Reynolds shrugged. ‘I did mention her turban hair-style, Chief.’

  Gently stared at him, grunting. ‘Did her hair-style cushion the blow?’ he asked.

  ‘No, but . . .’

  ‘It wouldn’t have stopped the blood spurting either – there’d be blood on those clothes, if he struck the blow. I suppose you did find spattered blood?’

  ‘Well, yes . . . on her dress, on the settee . . .’

  ‘Her turban hair-style didn’t stop that.’

  ‘In the lab, perhaps.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bank on that.’

  Buttifant looked up to say: ‘I think you’re right sir. There’s no sign of blood on any of these . . .’

  Then he caught a look from Reynolds and took cover again behind his magnifier.

  ‘So, if no blood,’ Gently said, ‘we’ll need to skate lightly around that one. We’d best advise ignoring it altogether and letting defence counsel make the running. Then it’ll sound less important, more like a defensive finesse. It’s a pity though . . . the prosecutor’s office won’t be so happy without its blood.’

  ‘But it’s not conclusive, Chief—!’ Reynolds burst out.

  ‘Oh no,’ Gently said. ‘Just one of those things. Provided we don’t come up with too many, the prosecutor’s office will soldier along with them.’

  He ignored Reynolds’ goaded look and went over to the C.I.D. man’s desk, where he could see a manilla folder of prints with Fazakerly Case scribbled across it. He turned them over. The divisional men had done a comprehensive job. The sprawled, nod-headed corpse of Clytie Fazakerly had been photographed from a score of angles. Not more than a yard from her slippered feet lay the gleaming belaying-pin, and dark stains covered the shoulders of the dress and peppered the settee-back adjacent. He turned to Reynolds, who had joined him at the desk.

  ‘Let’s face it: she was killed where she sat on the settee. Those scatter-marks prove it to the hilt: when she was struck she was precisely there.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean Fazakerly couldn’t have done it.’

  ‘It means another hole in the ice. I suppose there’s nothing in the P.M. report to suggest she was knocked out before she was killed?’

  Reynolds shook his head bleakly. ‘Just that one depressed fracture.’

  ‘No broken nails?’

  ‘Nothing of that sort. She was hit once, we think from behind.’

  ‘Well, it could have happened. In the middle of a row she may have sat down on the settee, and she may have ignored Fazakerly going behind her and getting the pin down off the wall. Did the housekeeper handle the pin, by the way?’

  ‘Says she didn’t,’ Reynolds mumbled.

  ‘We’ll suggest the pile of the carpet smeared the prints, and that he changed his grip before throwing it down. Those are the tricky points about the actual commission. We’re lucky to have a good witness in Mrs Bannister.’

  He sorted over some more prints. The last was a portrait which Reynolds had collected. It showed Clytie Fazakerly at full length and wearing nothing but swathes of gauze. She had a curiously round face with large cheek-bones and a squat nose, eyes that seemed to encroach on her forehead, and a chin vanishing beneath pouting lips. A bold, exposed face, resembling the type portrayed in Minoan paintings, having that same quality of belonging to a remote, dawn culture. Her blonde hair was twisted in a turban which accentuated the impression. She had a strong, buoyant body which carried a hint of athleticism.

  ‘Have you contacted her family?’ Gently asked.

  ‘They want nothing to do with it,’ Reynolds shrugged. ‘Her step-father is a solicitor in Bristol. He soon let me know what he thought about her. Then there’s her half-sister living in Kensington, she just wanted her name kept out of the papers. You’d think they’d care about the money, but apparently she smelled too high even for that.’

  ‘Did Fazakerly know where the money was going?’

  ‘No. We’ve got him on that at least. He didn’t know his wife had made a will, so he must have been thinking he was going to collect.’

  Gently smiled frostily. ‘So he may.’ He told Reynolds of Mrs Bannister’s bonfire. The C.I.D. man listened blankly, his eyes rounded at Gently.

  ‘But shouldn’t we pinch her for that?’ he asked at last.

  Gently shrugged. ‘It’s up to you. If you can afford the time Mrs Bannister can afford the expense.’

  ‘But what was she getting at?’

  ‘That’s easy. She seemed to think she was under suspicion.’

  ‘Mrs Bannister . . . ?’

  ‘She had that impression. It may have been something I said to her.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous!’ Reynolds said.

  ‘Of course Quite ridiculous. She even went on to admit how she might have gone up there after she saw Fazakerly leave. She’d have gone to condole with his wife, of course, and she’d find her sitting on the settee, and she’d know exactly where the pin was kept because it was she who chose the spot for it.’

  ‘But Chief, you can’t—’

  Gently shook his head. ‘That would be too convenient, wouldn’t it?’ he said. ‘Still, there’s a point about it which does interest us.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It fits.’

  But the impression he carried away from Reynolds’ office was of the disturbing face of the dead woman: it was beautiful, but with a beauty of a distant, half-comprehended time. By present standards it was not beautiful, which was why it was disturbing. Yet you knew immediately that in its own age it was radiant and royal. It carried back to a child-like morning, an Olympian youth of culture, pre-Hellenic, beyond the stamp the Greeks had given to female beauty. It set you fumbling for the clues to it, for vague tidings of an infant world, for a glimpse behind the blank veil raised by a thousand incarnations.

  He went down and sat for some moments in his car, just letting that face rest in his mind. Before seeing the photograph he’d begun to picture this woman from what he’d picked up from Fazakerly and Mrs Bannister. But the face altered all his ideas. I
t had suddenly wiped the record clean. In place of the depraved parasite he had been seeing was this . . . what was it? At the moment, a face!

  A face that excused what the woman had been? Not quite: but a face that helped one understand it. For example, she was amoral, and not immoral: to her, morality would be just a sound. She used her body to secure a fortune, well. It was merely an exercise of her power. If she had that power, why not use it? Why be put off by a clash of words? Then again, in service of that power, why not create conditions to heighten its enjoyment? To exploit to the full its mystical sensualism, unknown in her philosophy as sin?

  No doubt it was the strength of her amorality which fascinated the intellectual Mrs Bannister, which drew into a focus her slightly guilty inversion and set her defensively theorizing. For Mrs Bannister was synthetically amoral. She felt the sting of opinion. She had an answer waiting for the condemnation which Clytie Fazakerly would barely notice. And so she would worship that utter insouciance and discover there a mythic quality and perhaps feel herself the priestess of the myth: and exult a little when left in possession of it. For the priestess is an inferior until she embodies the goddess herself.

  A motive there? Gently mentally shrugged, then reached forward to turn the ignition key. But he must know more of Clytie Fazakerly before he could let the matter alone. Instead of a right turn towards Millbank he made a left turn towards Kensington. He drove to a block of flats in Knightsbridge Place, parked, and climbed two flights of steps.

  ‘Yes – who are you?’

  The door of the flat was being kept ajar by a safety-chain, and the blonde woman who answered it was wearing an embroidered dressing-gown and beaded slippers.

  ‘Are you Miss Merryn?’

  ‘Perhaps. Who are you?’

  Gently identified himself.

  ‘Oh, I see. I thought you might be the Press. They’ve been pestering Daddy ever since it happened.’

  She peered sternly at Gently through the gap, a manicured hand straying over her dressing-gown. If he’d been hoping for a resemblance to the dead woman he was disappointed by what he saw. Brenda Merryn was no Clytie Fazakerly. She had the commonplace good looks of the city woman. In any street you would meet a hundred of her going facelessly about their business.

  ‘Well, have you arrested Siggy yet, or have you come to tell me he’s done your job for you?’

  ‘Our job . . . ?’

  ‘Oh, it wouldn’t be a shock. He’s not the sort to face his responsibilities.’

  Gently shook his head. ‘Fazakerly is in custody. He gave himself up to me this morning.’

  ‘You surprise me. So what do you want, then?’

  ‘Just a chat with you. If it’s convenient.’

  For a moment he could read a curt refusal in her eyes, then she slid back a cuff to reveal a wristwatch, consulted it and sighed.

  ‘All right then, if you have to. But I can’t give you very long. Unlike my sister I work for a living, I have a surgery to attend at five-thirty.’

  She unchained the door and admitted him. They passed through a vestibule into a lounge. It was pleasantly furnished in contemporary style and had curtains of gay cretonne. A meal was set on a tray on a leaf-table under the window. It consisted of poached egg on toast, crisp-bread, honey, an apple and a small pot of tea.

  ‘You don’t mind my eating while we talk? I’d just got this served when you rang.’

  She drew up a chair to the table and began pouring herself a cup of tea.

  ‘I’d offer you some, but it’s a tiny pot, it’s the way you live when you’re alone. At least, it’s the way I live, not being able to run to French maids. What do we chat about?’

  ‘About your sister.’

  Gently also drew up a chair. In spite of himself he was feeling let down by the disparity between this woman and Mrs Fazakerly. She was blonde, but of a darker colouring, she was not so tall or robust; the quality of the face was simply missing: in Brenda Merryn it was tired sophistication. She had rather the gaunt, shadowful features of contemporary magazine trend. Even her manner of speaking was weary, as though arising from a deep fatigue.

  ‘First, you will kindly understand we are speaking of my half-sister. That’s as close a relationship as most people would want to admit to.’

  ‘You are a little the elder, naturally.’

  ‘Don’t bother to guess. I’m thirty-nine. Clytie was thirty-six in June. She didn’t look it, I probably do.’

  ‘You weren’t very intimate, I take it.’

  ‘Not very intimate, no. That doesn’t mean to say I steamed with righteousness and cut her dead in the street. After all, I was her only relative, not counting Daddy; and he doesn’t count. I’d give her the time of day when I saw her, and pay her a visit once in so often.’

  ‘When was the last time you visited her?’

  Brenda Merryn paused to chew.

  ‘Recently,’ she said. ‘One day last week. On the Friday, I imagine.’

  ‘Was her husband there?’

  ‘No, he’d gone. Down to Rochester, to his woman.’

  ‘His woman?’

  ‘You know about her, don’t you? Sarah someone. His latest woman.’

  Gently nodded. ‘But how did you know about her?’

  ‘Oh, there’s no mystery about Siggy’s women. I had a chat with him last time I was there. The poor fool is really sent by this one.’

  ‘And Mrs Fazakerly would know too?’

  Brenda Merryn paused over her tea-cup. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I should think it likely. Siggy wouldn’t bother to cover much. You must understand there was nothing between them, they hadn’t slept together for a century. Clytie was carrying on with La Bannister, and Siggy was free to do what he liked. I don’t suppose he actually discussed his amours with her, but there was no point in him being secretive.’

  ‘They wouldn’t have quarrelled over such a thing.’

  ‘On the surface, it seems unlikely.’

  ‘Seems?’

  ‘Well . . . Clytie had a bitch of a temper. If she was in the mood she might have picked on it.’

  ‘In other words, if she wanted to hurt her husband, she could have picked on this as an instrument?’

  ‘Yes, that’s possible. It’d be like Clytie. But his having a woman would be nothing to do with it.’

  ‘So what would have something to do with it?’

  Brenda Merryn slanted a shoulder. I’ve told you I wasn’t intimate with them,’ she said. ‘You’d better ask elsewhere. You could try La Bannister.’

  ‘You had no hint of it on your last visit?’

  ‘No. It was all talk about fashion.’

  ‘Mrs Fazakerly was her usual self?’

  ‘Oh, quite. Queen Clytie.’

  She poured herself a second cup, then buttered some crisp-bread and spread it with honey. She had a little colour on either cheek-bone and she avoided Gently’s eye as she ate. The embroidered dressing-gown was parted hospitably, but to this she paid no attention; or it may have been a deliberate gesture to show she was still a force, though thirty-nine. Her tawny hair, neatly arranged, had the brushed sheen of devoted attention.

  ‘You don’t think highly of Mrs Bannister.’

  Brenda Merryn bit off crisp-bread. ‘She made Clytie worse than she was,’ she said. ‘She’s full of clap-trap about Lesbianism.’

  ‘You’d say she influenced Mrs Fazakerly that way.’

  ‘Of course. Not that Clytie wanted pushing. But La Bannister stuffed her head with nonsense and made a fool of her in general. Then she made trouble with Clytie’s friends. She wanted Clytie on her own. And Clytie was too besotted with her to raise a finger in protest.’

  ‘Who were these friends?’

  Brenda Merryn munched. ‘I’m not so certain I remember. This was all several years ago, when Clytie moved in at Carlyle Court.’

  ‘People with money?’

  ‘Oh, I daresay. But that wasn’t the first qualification.’

  ‘Lesbian friends?
’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And you remember none of them?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  She followed the crisp-bread with a sip of tea.

  ‘Please,’ she said, ‘don’t think I’m prudish. I lead a reasonably chequered life, and I’m used to a medical view of things. There’s a dormant slant that way in all women and a lot of us give it a try. It has an advantage men rarely think of, namely it doesn’t get you into trouble. There are also a few emotional bonuses which go with the shedding inhibitions, a feeling of biological emancipation, of being on a footing with the male. Oh, there’s plenty to be said for it. Only with me it doesn’t work.’

  ‘So these were not friends of yours.’

  ‘I’m trying to make that plain.’

  ‘There was never, say, trouble, with any of them?’

  ‘No. They just got the push.’

  Now she began on the apple, peeling it with deft, practised movements, pausing once to tilt her wrist for a check with the watch. It was a natural-enough action, yet somehow it just missed of being natural, and she chopped the apple in quarters roughly, making the knife ring on the plate.

  ‘Well, perhaps there is one woman I remember.’

  Gently watched her, saying nothing.

  ‘Her name was Beryl, Beryl Rogers, she used to be very strong with Clytie. She was in with La Bannister too, they were both thick with Beryl. But it only lasted a short time. She blotted her copybook somehow.’

  ‘Do you know how?’

  ‘It was several years back, and I never did know the details. Ask Siggy or La Bannister. It’s just that her name came to mind.’

  ‘Where did she live?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘What was her job?’

  ‘I don’t know that she had one. Honestly, I wouldn’t have remembered her now if you hadn’t got me thinking with your questions. Does it matter?’

  Gently shrugged. ‘We’d like a reason for a row the Fazakerlys had. You say it couldn’t have been just his playing around with a woman, so naturally I’m looking for something else.’