Blood Lines

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  Slider nodded gently, the quiet stream into which she might slip her painful confessions. ‘Have you any children?’

  Her eyes hurt. ‘Just one. Our son, Jamie.’ She looked for his benefit towards a framed photograph on the sofa end-table, of a smiling, gap-toothed, very ordinary-looking boy with tousled hair, in an open-necked shirt. ‘That was taken when he was nine.’

  ‘How old is he now?’

  ‘Mentally he’s still nine. Chronologically he’s twenty-five.’ She held Slider’s gaze, as though for support; Atherton she had clearly forgotten. ‘He’s in a home, in Sussex – near Petworth. He’s very happy there. It’s a very nice old house, large grounds, even a lake. We go down three times a year to see him – at Christmas, Easter, and on his birthday.’ She seemed on the point of adding something else, and then didn’t.

  Was that part of the not being good enough? Slider wondered. He looked into her naked face and could only be silent in the face of the world of hurt revealed there. If her husband had been murdered, life had already dealt her a worse blow. He moved a foot, scuffing against the floor, and she drew back into herself a little, enough for him to be able to put the next question.

  ‘Do you know Sandal Palliser?’

  Her expression grew veiled. ‘Yes, of course I know him. He’s one of Roger’s friends.’

  ‘Friends? I was told he and your husband didn’t like each other.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ she asked, but warily.

  ‘They had a violent quarrel at the television centre the night he died. I was told it was not unusual. And they did have a long-running dispute in the newspapers.’

  ‘That had nothing to do with it. That was merely a professional debate,’ she said unwarily.

  ‘So, what was the cause of the enmity?’

  She hesitated, as though she contemplated not answering. Then she answered in a voice which was suddenly harsh, ‘I don’t know what, specifically, they quarrelled about the other night. But I imagine it had something to do with a woman. My husband – well, you’ll find out sooner or later, I suppose – my husband had other women. At one time he and Sandal used to go out together and get drunk and pick up – women, girls, call them what you will. There was rivalry between them as to who could do best at it, but it was friendly rivalry at first. Then I believe Roger “stole” one from Sandal, and after that it became hostile. They would do each other down if they could. I thought it was all very silly at first, but then it seemed to get nastier. I don’t know why – except that Sandal was always jealous of Roger, because he’d done so much better in his career. And financially, of course,’ she added. ‘Sandal is a great believer in money. He would love to be rich, and failing that, he likes to be with the rich. And old money, of course, is more desirable than new. He hated the fact that Roger had the entrée into that sort of society, while he didn’t.’

  ‘Through you.’

  ‘Through me, yes. But Sandal would have married well if he could.’

  Slider glanced across at Atherton, and Mrs Greatrex, seeing the eye movement, remembered where she was and drew the perfect composure back over her face. Slider stood up.

  ‘May we see his room?’

  There was a bedroom, dressing-room, bathroom and sitting-room, all interconnecting, on the second floor. The maid who showed them up explained that Mrs Greatrex had a bedroom and bathroom on this floor, but used the morning-room downstairs as her sitting-room. All the rooms were expensively carpeted and furnished with antiques, and also expensively cleaned. The wastepaper basket in the sitting-room was empty, and all the surfaces were clear. The fireplace contained only a log-effect electric fire in an elaborate iron basket, almost comical in its inappropriateness. It went to show, Slider thought, that everyone has their blind spots.

  The room had been done yesterday morning when Mr Greatrex left, the maid said. He had returned in the late afternoon to shower and change before going to the BBC, and the room had then been tidied again, and the towels changed. If there had been a note, it would have been found and given to madam, but there was no note. He seemed, the maid said, very cock-a-hoop when he came back to the house for the last time; not at all depressed or sad.

  But there was a small bureau in the sitting-room, and a lowboy in the bedroom, both stuffed with personal effects. ‘We’ll have to go through them all,’ Slider said, opening drawers without enthusiasm. ‘We’d better get someone sympathetic on the job. Anderson’s a nice, clean-living lad.’

  ‘Pity the maid’s so efficient. These rooms are as unrevealing as a hotel.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Slider said. ‘There’s negative evidence: if his clothes are taken away to be washed when he takes them off, the only way he could get holes in his socks would be by not changing them.’

  ‘Dirty boy, eh?’

  Slider opened another drawer, lifted up some neatly folded shirts, and found under the lining-paper, two pornographic magazines. ‘You might say.’

  ‘What’s that? Oh, hygiene publications. I’m beginning to build up a picture of this man in all his loveliness.’

  Slider was now in the sweater drawer, and found, similarly hidden, a black-and-white photograph in a very old leather frame, of a girl of about fifteen, with short fair hair pulled back at one side by a slide, and a cheerful grin. On the back the photographer’s name was stamped in curly Gothic print, and an address in Pulborough.

  Atherton looked over his shoulder. ‘The sister, do you think?’

  ‘Could be. But why is it hidden? Mrs G said he was fond of his sister.’

  ‘Maybe it didn’t go with the decor.’

  Slider stared at the photograph, frowning, and then slipped it into his pocket. Atherton noted the action and forbore to comment. His boss, as he knew, often had trouble with photographs. They upset him, in the same sort of way that dead people’s shoes upset Atherton.

  On their way out, they approached Mrs Greatrex again to ask permission for someone to come and go through the papers. Then Slider produced the knife. ‘Have you ever seen this before?’

  She looked at it, and her face seemed to turn a shade paler, almost yellowing. ‘Was that –? No. No, I haven’t seen it before. It’s not Roger’s.’

  ‘To your knowledge.’

  ‘Why would he have such a thing?’ she countered.

  ‘Was he ever in the Boy Scouts?’

  ‘Really, what odd questions you – oh. I see. No, I don’t think so. It wouldn’t have been in his family’s tradition. And Roger was never a joiner. He liked to be different from everyone else. He wouldn’t have cared for the uniform.’

  ‘One other thing,’ Slider said, remembering, ‘was your husband religious?’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘He wasn’t a churchgoer? Fond of the Bible?’

  ‘Good heavens, no!’

  Slider explained about the card.

  ‘I don’t know where that would have come from,’ Mrs Greatrex said, ‘but I knew very little of what he did day by day. But he wasn’t a Christian. His father’s name was Grossvater. They changed it when they came over, when Roger was a little boy.’ She looked quizzically from one to the other. ‘I thought you realised, that was what I was saying earlier. I come from an Old Catholic family. It was largely why my father thought Roger unsuitable.’

  Front wheel skid, Slider thought. Well, who’d a thunk it?

  ‘But he was fair-haired and blue-eyed,’ Atherton said, unable to withhold a faint protest.

  She looked at him blankly, as though the table lamp had spoken. ‘Sephardic Jews often are,’ she said after a moment, as if he ought to have jolly well known that.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Who Dragged Whom?

  Sandal Palliser’s house on Addison Road had been a semi-rural villa when it was built in the eighteen-forties, but the countryside had retreated like the tide fifteen miles further west and left it stranded. Now it stood on the one-way system which was the southbound extension of the West C
ross Route, and traffic thundered or coughed past it all day, wreathing it in noxious fumes and making its walls shake. Flats and houses pressed up close on every side; but it slept in its secret, unkempt garden behind the high brick wall as though entranced, and amongst the overgrown shrubs and trees city birds found a green haven which must have surprised the socks off them.

  Slider’s practised eye took in the signs of neglect. ‘Either Palliser’s not doing well enough to pay for the upkeep,’ he said as they walked up the path, with twigs tugging at them like fractious children seeking attention.

  ‘Or he doesn’t care,’ Atherton finished for him, ‘and spends his money on something else.’

  ‘That roof wants looking at. And the guttering. I hate to see a lovely house let go.’

  Inside, it was as different as it could be from Greatrex’s pampered surroundings. The walls had a long time ago been painted magnolia, and then left to get on with it. The furniture was old, some of it antique, some merely ancient, and there was an awful lot of it, which at least helped to hide the deficiencies of the decor. There was clutter everywhere, books, sheet-music, toys, bicycles, china, clothes, plant pots, an art-deco naked lady lampstand with a broken flex, a footstool only half re-covered with a petit-point of pansies in a vase, a Royal Standard typewriter, an ancient record-player and a tottering heap of 78s, a scooter with the front wheel missing, a pair of leather riding-boots on wooden trees, a headless teddy bear, a wooden high-chair with the reddish paint worn off in patches so it resembled brawn – it was as though the house had been visited in the fifties by a huge family of cousins, and never tidied since.

  Easing his way past a battered Utility sideboard loaded with vases and jam-jars, which was almost blocking the passage, and tripping on a hole in the carpet, which seemed to be made of off-cuts, Slider was led into the kitchen where he was able to take stock of Mrs Palliser. She was a surprise, too, after the steely glamour of Mrs Greatrex. She was a comfortable, motherly-looking woman with a kind face, iron-grey hair pulled back into an unfashionable and rather unsuccessful bun at the nape of her neck, and unexpectedly dark eyes. She was wearing a flowered smock over a shapeless brown skirt, and the sides of her forefingers were deeply ingrained with the sort of stain that comes from a lifetime of peeling vegetables. She seemed to have been making soup, and there was a complex smell of food in the air.

  She scanned the faces of both men while Slider introduced them. ‘You’ve come about Roger, I suppose. That’s a terrible thing, isn’t it?’ She had the hint of a Scottish accent. ‘It said in the paper this morning that he committed suicide, is that right?’

  ‘It looks as if it could be suicide,’ Slider said cautiously.

  ‘I can’t believe that,’ she said firmly. ‘He wasn’t the sort. Sandy doesn’t believe it either, I know that for a fact. Roger had everything to live for. I suppose you want to talk to Sandy, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘He’s up in his study, working. He doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s writing, but of course this is an emergency, isn’t it? I’ll just show you up. Can you wait a moment, I was making his coffee, and you can take it up with you. I dare say you’d like a cup of coffee? How do you take it?’

  Shortly afterwards they were following her upstairs, Atherton in the rear carrying a tray with coffee and a plate of shortbread and trying to keep watch round it for hazards: the stair carpet was as full of holes as the hall, and there was in addition the problem of the books stacked on both sides of each stair, leaving only a narrow space in the middle. Mrs Palliser climbed like a stayer, using her hands to push down on her thighs to boost her upwards, talking breathlessly the while.

  ‘We’ve been here since nineteen sixty-five, bought the house with the money Sandy got for his first book. It cost two thousand pounds, can you imagine that? Of course, it was in a terrible state.’ Behind Slider, Atherton snorted and changed it to a cough. ‘We’d to do it up ourselves, bit by bit, for we hadn’t a bean in those days. Years it took us. It’s worth half a million now if we wanted to sell it. When we first moved in, there weren’t even any floorboards in the hall. It had been empty for years. The garden was like a jungle. Well, we’ve been happy here. It’s a good house, a happy house. Oh, mind the step-ladder on the landing. We keep it there for changing the light bulbs, the ceiling’s so high, and they seem to pop every five minutes. They don’t make them to last the way they used to. Sandy says we ought to get the wiring looked at. I dare say it might be that.’

  Slider dared say, too. The light switch he was just passing, skirting the step-ladder and a standard lamp with a split shade and a trailing flex, was a round, dark brown bakelite one with the little nipple-like protrusion in the middle, the sort he remembered from his childhood. Hitler still wanted to be an engine-driver when this house was last wired.

  ‘I suppose it’s a bit cluttered, the house,’ Mrs Palliser said without apology as she embarked on a second flight, ‘but you tend not to notice your own messes, do you? And you never know when something might come in. Sandy! Here’s visitors.’

  She had reached a door on the half-landing and pushed it open. It opened only part way, stopped by some further foothill of gubbins concealed behind it. Through the doorway Slider saw a man sitting at a vast desk which bore a personal computer at the centre with piles of books and notepads all around. The rest of the room contained nothing but a side table, a red leatherette-covered armchair with curved wooden arms, and some bookshelves on metal supports fixed to the wall; but almost every inch of surface was covered in heaps of books and papers. The large, beautiful sash window looked out over the avian paradise of the garden; and the naked light bulb dangling before it on a pre-war plaited fabric cord had been hitched across by a piece of string tied to a nail in the bookshelf so that it would hang over the desk.

  ‘This is the police,’ Mrs Palliser announced. ‘And here’s your coffee. I’ll leave you the while, then.’

  Sandal Palliser swung round to look, and then got up and came to take the tray from Atherton. Slider had not expected him to be so tall, or so old. He had thick white hair which sprouted upwards from his head and only bent over at the ends from its own weight. His face was deeply lined, his eyebrows bushy, his large nose spread and coarsened with age and hard living, his neck chicken-skinned. He wore old-fashioned glasses with brown plastic rims, and behind them his eyes were an unexpectedly bright blue, which made them somehow look completely round and rather blind. But his movements were vigorous and his voice powerful; probably, Slider thought, he was not as old as he looked – late fifties, perhaps.

  ‘You’ve come about Roger, I suppose,’ he said. He put the tray down on top of the papers on the side table. ‘Chairs, now. You’d better have the armchair,’ to Slider. ‘Shove all that stuff on the floor. It’s all right, it won’t hurt. And if you,’ to Atherton, ‘go into the next room, you’ll see a kitchen chair just behind the door. Bring that in.’

  When the arrangements were complete he took up his coffee and sipped it, and passed the shortbread around. ‘Phyllis makes it herself. She’s a wonderful cook. No bloody use at anything else, and eccentric as a parrot, but she can cook. I’ve been married to her for thirty years, and she gets more like Princess Fred every day.’ He looked from Slider to Atherton and back with a quick, appraising glance. ‘Are you an historian?’

  ‘Architecture’s my interest,’ Slider answered. ‘But there are overlaps.’

  The round blue eyes reappraised in the light of that information, but he only said, ‘Perhaps you’ll know who Princess Fred was, then. So, Roger Greatrex. I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘It says in the paper it was suicide,’ Slider said blandly.

  Palliser grinned without humour. ‘Oh no, you don’t catch me with that little game! I know perfectly well it wasn’t. Roger loved himself much too much to want to deprive the world of his presence. And since you can’t cut your throat by accident, he must have been murdere
d. No big surprise, really. There must have been a waiting-list of people wanting to kill him.’

  ‘Who was at the head of the queue?’ Slider asked.

  ‘Don’t ask me. That’s for you to find out. I should look amongst the women, if I were you – there were a few with grievances. God knows what they saw in him, though. He was a dirty little bastard. I don’t mean sexy, I mean dirty.’ He caught Atherton’s eye and grinned again as he looked around the room. ‘Oh yes, it’s untidy here, all right. I have a theory, that there are people in the world who are untidy but clean, and people who are dirty but tidy. Roger was immaculate on the outside, but it was all a façade. Whereas me – you could eat your dinner off me. And many a woman has done so, but that’s another story.’

  Atherton gave a tight smile, and seeing Slider’s dreamy expression, gathered he was to ask the questions this time. Briskness, he thought, was the order of the day. ‘You had a quarrel with Mr Greatrex in the greenroom. Would you mind telling me what about?’

  ‘Oho, that’s it, is it? Amazing how predictable you people are. Ay quarrel, followed by ay murder, ergo – not that you’d know what ergo means – the quarreller must be the murderer. Ha! Well, not this time, chaps, sorry. Cherchez la femme, that’s my advice to you.’

  ‘Mrs Greatrex says you and he used to compete over how many women you could pick up,’ Atherton said, obligingly changing tack.

  ‘Dear Caroline! Serves her right for marrying Roger. If she’d married me instead – but that’s yet another story. Oh yes, Roger and I used to haunt the streets together. You wouldn’t think we were the same age, would you? He had the body of a twenty-year-old – several times a week if he could get it.’ He laughed at his own joke. ‘Phyllis says he must have had a picture in his attic.’